Getting help, and reporting someone
If somebody is using Flamenet Messenger to harass, threaten or hurt you, we want to know. This page says how to tell us, what happens next, and, because it matters more than the promise, what we cannot do.
Reporting from inside the app
This is the route to use if you can, and the gesture is different for a message and for a story.
A message. Press and hold it until the menu appears, then choose Report and say briefly what is wrong with it. Holding is how you reach anything about a single message, copying and replying included.
A story. Open it. Report is on the story itself, beside the reactions.
A person, rather than one thing they sent. Open the conversation, open the menu at the top, and choose Block. That stops them reaching you at all, and it works whether or not you report them.
A report goes to the people who run this server. It does not go to the person you reported, and they are not told you reported them.
Reporting by email
If the app will not open, or you would rather write to a person, use abuse@flamenetmessenger.com. A real mailbox, read by the people who run this relay.
It helps to include the handle of the person involved, roughly when it happened, and what you would like done. Whether to quote the messages is up to you, see what we can and cannot see below.
What happens next
A report goes to the people who run this relay by email, as soon as you send it, and it is also kept so it can be read again later. We read every one.
What we can do about it today is narrower than this page used to claim, and saying so is better than a promise that is not built. We can remove a stored attachment, and we can act on a pattern across several reports about the same account, including suspending it. A suspended account cannot sign in, send, or read anything on this server until the people who run it lift the suspension. That is done by them, on the server, not from inside the app.
We do not reply to reports. Nothing you receive will tell you what we decided, and the apps say the same when you send one. A reporting route that quietly promises a reply is worse than one that is plain about not sending one.
This relay is run by a small company, not a moderation department. If you need somebody available at three in the morning, we are honestly not it, and you should know that before you rely on us.
What we can and cannot see
Messages are sealed on the sending phone and opened on the receiving one. The server carries them without being able to read them, so we cannot go and look at a conversation. We are not withholding it. We do not have it.
A report is the exception, and it changes what we can see, so read this before you send one. Your phone can read the message. When you report it, your phone offers to attach a readable copy, and that box is ticked by default. Leave it ticked and the people who run this relay get the text of that message and who sent it, in plain form, by email. That is what attaching it is for: it is the only way a report can be judged on what was said rather than on your account of it. Untick it and the report still goes, naming the account and your reason, with no copy of the message.
Either way it cannot be undone once sent, which is why the app says so on the same screen rather than here alone.
The same is true of what the relay stores, which is written out in full there and is deliberately not much.
If you are in danger
If someone has threatened you with harm, or you are afraid for your safety, please contact your local emergency services first. We will cooperate with a lawful request from law enforcement, and what we are able to hand over is limited to what we actually keep, which does not include the contents of anyone's messages.
Children
Flamenet Messenger is not intended for children. Material that sexually exploits a child is the one thing we will act on immediately and report onward as the law requires. Send it to abuse@flamenetmessenger.com with as much detail as you can, and mark it urgent in the subject line.
Other ways to reach us
- abuse@flamenetmessenger.com, harassment, threats, or anything about another person's conduct.
- security@flamenetmessenger.com, a vulnerability in the software. See Security.
- privacy@flamenetmessenger.com, a question about your own data, or a request to delete it.
- legal@flamenetmessenger.com, legal process and law-enforcement requests.
- Community, bugs, the protocol, and running your own relay.
Who you are writing to
Extant 2000 LLC
7051 Brookfield Plz, PO Box 41
Springfield VA 22150
United States
If you run your own relay, this page describes the one operated at this domain. Your own server is yours to answer for, and the people using it should be told how to reach you.