The recovery key no longer exists

The app used to show a recovery key when you joined your first encrypted chat. It no longer exists, and there’s nothing you need to keep. An old key you wrote down somewhere has no function any more.

Why

Direct and collective chats are no longer end-to-end encrypted. Messages are stored in plain text on our side. Only the participants or the members of the collective may read them, and only after signing in with the code from your email. We as the operator can technically read them. The app’s privacy notice says so too.

What you get in return: your data export contains your messages in readable form, and on a new device your chats are simply there after you sign in.

Older encrypted messages

Messages that were still stored encrypted could no longer be decrypted after the switch and were removed. If old chat messages from that period are missing, that’s why. We can’t restore them.

Don’t mix it up: recovery codes

If you set up two-factor sign-in, you get recovery codes for it. They have nothing to do with chats: they help when you no longer have access to your authenticator app. How that works is in Sign-in code not arriving.