Protection you don't have to configure.
Avano makes the private choice the only choice. There is no privacy mode to switch on, because there is no other mode. Here is what protects you, in plain words.
Your identity lives on your phone
It is created from twenty-four words on the device itself. No phone number, no email, no account with us, and nothing registered anywhere that could be looked up or taken.
End-to-end encryption, ready for what comes next
Signal's published and formally analysed encryption, with post-quantum protection on the key exchange and on every message after it. What you say today stays private in the years ahead.
Tor, built in
Every message travels over the Tor network from inside the app. Our relay can only be reached as an onion service, so it never learns your network address.
Relays that keep no records
Messages pass through as sealed, same-size packets, held in memory only until they are collected. Nothing is written to disk, and there is no accounts table to begin with.
Nothing to see on the wire
While Avano is open it sends at a steady rate, so someone watching your connection cannot tell when you send a message. Photos and files still upload in a burst when you send them. On for everyone, and free.
Locked means sealed
Behind your passphrase, your messages, contacts and keys are sealed and, unless message alerts are on (on Android they let calls ring you, and keep the key in memory for up to 24 hours after you last open Avano), the keys are gone from memory. One action erases the account, the messages and the keys together.
Verified in person
Every contact has a safety number. Compare it face to face or scan it from the other phone, and you know nobody sits in the middle.
No push service, no third party
Neither Apple nor Google is told a message arrived for you. On Android the app alerts you itself, over our relay, saying only its own name; on iPhone it shows no alert yet.
A way back, on your terms
Your twenty-four words bring your identity back on a new phone. Your contacts come back too, as they were when you last gave packets to recovery helpers you chose. Any two of them are needed, and any two of them together could read the list, so choose people who would not.
Clear about the edges.
Calls travel through a call relay outside Tor, which sees both callers' network addresses and the call's timing for as long as it lasts, never what is said. The app tells you so before every call.
Your message history lives only on the phone that received it. We keep no copy anywhere, so there is nothing to restore it from, and nothing to take.
Avano is pre-release software and has not yet had an independent security audit. We say so here rather than let you find out.