Knowledge base / Privacy

Identity and login

There is no account, no email and no password. There is a key, and everything else follows from how well you look after it.

Keys, not accounts

Your identity is a Nostr keypair. The public half (an npub) is what the service knows you by; the private half (an nsec) stays on your device and signs on your behalf.

Your nym — the display name you picked — is decoration. The four characters after it are derived from your public key, and they are the part that actually distinguishes one alice from another.

Ways to sign in

• Generate one. The default on a fresh install.
• Paste an nsec. Brings an existing identity — from Nymchat or any other Nostr app — with its credits and its Nymbot history.
• A browser extension (NIP-07). The key stays in the extension and never reaches the page; the app asks it to sign.
• A remote signer (NIP-46), if you keep your key on another device.

Signing in with the same key on a second device gives you the same account. Nothing has to be migrated, because nothing lives anywhere but the key.

Identity encryption

Optional protection for the stored key, so it cannot be read out of local storage without unlocking. You pick the factor per device: a passphrase, a biometric, or a hardware security key.

No password, salt or credential is ever synced. Only an on/off preference travels, so you can choose to set encryption up on a new device rather than have it assumed.

It also covers the anonymous mode throwaway key and its vouchers. Your git access token is device-local too, for the same reason.

Panic wipe

Press and hold the panic control and everything local is destroyed immediately: your key, every conversation, the git token, the throwaway key and any credits left on it.

It is not a logout and there is no confirmation dialog to talk yourself out of. If you have backed up your nsec you can come back to the same account later; if you have not, that identity is gone.