Privacy control
Hold messages until you unlock
With hold-until-unlock on, Vardum fetches nothing while it's locked. New messages wait, encrypted, on the relay until you unlock, so a seized locked phone has no newly delivered ciphertext to extract. It controls delivery, not deletion: it doesn't remove anything already on the phone.
The threat
A locked phone is not an empty phone
Locks protect the screen, not the phone
Mainstream messengers keep delivering in the background while locked. That's how a message is already there when you unlock. The lock decides who can open the app, not what it has stored.
Seizure happens while it's locked
A phone is almost always locked when it's taken. Extraction doesn't need your screen: it reads the storage, where encrypted copies are already sitting.
Ciphertext on the phone is still evidence
Encrypted copies can be kept for a future attack. Nothing at rest removes the keys; hold-until-unlock keeps the ciphertext itself off the phone.
How it works
Delivery waits for you
While Vardum is locked, it fetches nothing
No message is fetched, cached or decrypted while the app is locked. Messages wait on the relay as ciphertext it holds no key for.
Both clocks keep running
Unopened messages still expire 12 to 48 hours after sending. Burn after opening starts only when you open the message.
Unlock opens the pipe
The moment you unlock, Vardum pulls the waiting messages and decrypts them on your phone. Anything fetched before you turned the hold on stays until it burns or the thread ends.
Off by default, so messages are waiting when you open Vardum. Turn it on in Settings → Lock and emergency → Hold messages while locked.
The comparison
Every app we compared keeps delivering to a locked phone
It's how their notifications work. Vardum can keep the messages themselves away from it.
| App | Downloads while locked? |
|---|---|
| Vardum, hold on | No. Nothing at all, not even ciphertext, until you unlock |
| Signal | Yes, encrypted local copies in the background |
| iMessage | Yes; iCloud backup can keep copies |
| Yes | |
| Threema | Yes |
| Telegram | Yes; cloud chats stored indefinitely |
Based on each app's public documentation as of September 2026; informational, not independent assurance. We're not aware of another mainstream messenger with a hold-until-unlock mode. If one exists, tell us and this table changes.
The honest part
What it costs
- Senders see no delivery confirmation while you're away. From their side, the message simply waits.
- A message you never unlock for still burns on its normal clock. It doesn't wait forever.
- It controls delivery, not storage. Clearing what's already on the phone is the job of the burn timers, the app lock and the self-destruct countdown.