Dead Drop Terms of Use

Effective: 1 October 2026
Who we are: Critical Mass Labs LLC, Alliance, Ohio, USA ("we", "us")

These are the terms for Dead Drop, a private messaging app for iPhone, and for the Dead Drop Pro subscription. They are an agreement between you and Critical Mass Labs LLC, not Apple (see section 16). They are written in plain words on purpose; if anything is unclear, write to chris.heffernan@criticalmassforge.com.

1. Accepting these terms

You accept these terms when you tap "Create my identity" on the welcome page, and again each time you use the app. If you do not agree, do not use the app. You must be at least 17 to use it.

2. What the service is, and what it is not

Dead Drop sends short text notes, one to one, between two copies of the app. Every note is sealed on your phone before it leaves, to the one person it is for, and our servers carry sealed bytes and a mailbox address. What our servers see and keep is set out in the Privacy Policy at https://asymmetria.io/dead-drop/privacy, which is part of these terms.

There is no account. You never give us a phone number, an email address, a name or a password, and we have no record of who you are. Because of that:

• We cannot recover anything for you. Your identity is a key pair made on your phone and born from twelve words that are shown only to you. If you lose the phone and the twelve words, the identity and every message in it are gone. That is by design, not a fault, and there is nothing we can restore.
• The twelve words bring back the identity, not the messages. Entering them on a new phone rebuilds the same code and the same mailbox. Contacts come back as people write to you again. Messages do not.
• There is no customer account to log into, suspend or delete on a server. Deleting the app removes the identity from the phone.

The app is text only. There are no calls, no groups and no attachments.

3. Your responsibilities

• Lawful use. You use Dead Drop only for purposes that are legal where you are and where the people you write to are.
• Your phone and its lock. The identity lives in your iPhone's Keychain behind your Face ID or passcode. Whoever can unlock your phone can use your identity. Keeping the phone locked, and keeping iOS up to date, is yours to do.
• Your recovery phrase. The twelve words are the identity. Anyone who reads them holds it, and nobody, including us, can recover them if they are lost or replace them if they are copied. Write them down somewhere safe; the app never copies, shares or types them for you.
• Your contact code and safety numbers. You decide who gets your code. Anyone who has it can write to you. The app gives each contact a safety number so you can check, with them, that you are sealing notes to the code you meant; the app cannot do that check for you.

4. Dead Drop Pro

Dead Drop has two tiers. Free keeps every security property. Nothing in Pro is a protection a free phone lacks, and Pro is never required to keep your notes private; Pro adds room:

• Up to five identities on one phone, each with its own code and phrase.
• The vault: notes, phrases, codes and images sealed to yourself, behind Face ID.
• Black out screenshots and recordings inside the app.
• The Pro look across the app.

How it is sold. Pro is an auto-renewing subscription, monthly or yearly, bought through Apple's in-app purchase and charged to your Apple ID at the price shown in the App Store at purchase, in your storefront's currency. Prices are set in the App Store and may change; a change applies from your next renewal and Apple tells you first under its own rules. There is no free trial.

Renewal and cancellation. Your subscription renews automatically for the same period unless you cancel it at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Apple charges the renewal within the 24 hours before the period ends. You manage and cancel the subscription in your iPhone's Settings (Apple ID → Subscriptions) or from "Manage in Settings" on the Pro screen; deleting the app does not cancel it. Cancelling stops the next renewal and leaves Pro on until the end of the period you have paid for.

Refunds. Payment, receipts and refunds are Apple's. Refund requests go to Apple and are decided under Apple's terms; we do not take payment and cannot issue a refund ourselves.

Restore. "Restore purchases" on the Pro screen asks Apple for the subscriptions on your Apple ID. Pro follows your Apple ID, not an identity, and applies to every identity on the phone.

How your phone knows. Your phone checks its Pro status with Apple, not with us. Buying Pro creates no account with us and links nothing to your mailbox; we never see your card, your Apple ID or your receipt.

If Pro ends. Nothing you made is deleted. Extra identities stay readable and switchable; only creating or importing another is refused. Everything in the vault stays readable, deletable and exportable; only adding or importing entries is refused. The screenshot black-out applies while Pro is active.

5. Acceptable use

You may not use Dead Drop:

• to break the law, or to help anyone else break it;
• to harass, threaten or defraud anyone, or to send anyone material they have not agreed to receive;
• to send a note that is unlawful where you are or where the recipient is;
• to pass off another person's contact code or safety number as your own;
• to interfere with the relay, the mixnet or the directory, to flood them, to probe them for weaknesses, or to run anything against them other than the app;
• to resell or sublicense the service, or to pass off the app as your own;
• to copy, modify, reverse engineer or redistribute the app except as the law allows regardless of this clause.

We cannot read a note, so we cannot moderate what is written. We may block a mailbox address or refuse packets that abuse the service; we cannot see who is behind a mailbox, so that is the only tool we have. If someone sends you something you did not want, you can delete the conversation and the contact from your phone; they can no longer reach you unless you share a new code with them.

6. Delivery, disappearing notes and retention

Delivery is best effort. A sealed packet waits on a server for the other phone to collect it for up to 24 hours and is then deleted uncollected; a note that is not collected in that window is lost. The words under your own notes (sent, delivered, opened) come only from the other phone, never from a server. We do not promise that any note arrives, arrives in order, or arrives at a particular time, and we do not keep a copy of anything to re-send.

Disappearing timers are a promise between two copies of this app, not a law of physics: your copy is deleted when the time is up, theirs is deleted the same time after they first open the conversation, and a screenshot, a phone running an older build or a backup made earlier keeps a copy. We do not promise that a note is gone from another person's phone.

The relay, the mixnet and the directory may be unavailable, changed or withdrawn at any time, and the app may stop working with older servers.

7. Beta builds

While Dead Drop is distributed through TestFlight it is a test build that talks to live infrastructure. It may contain bugs, may lose messages, and may change or remove features between builds without notice. Pro features may be switched on for every tester during the beta and switched off when the subscription launches, without charge and without carrying anything over. Apple's TestFlight terms also apply to a beta build. This section falls away when the app leaves TestFlight.

8. Intellectual property

The Dead Drop app, its name, its mark and its design are ours or our licensors'. We give you a personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the app on an iPhone you own or control, under these terms and Apple's usage rules. Your notes and whatever you put in the vault are yours; we never hold them in a readable form and claim no rights to them.

9. No warranty

Dead Drop is provided as it is and as available. We describe what the app is designed to do and what we do not collect; we do not promise that it is free of errors, that it will always be available, that a note cannot be intercepted or read by someone who controls your phone or the other person's, or that it meets any particular need. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim every warranty, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Some places do not allow this; there, you keep the rights the law gives you.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost messages, lost identities, lost data or lost profits, arising from your use of Dead Drop, however caused. Our total liability to you for all claims under these terms is limited to the greater of the amount you paid for Pro through the App Store in the twelve months before the claim or fifty US dollars (US $50). Some places do not allow these limits, so some of them may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

11. Ending the agreement

You can stop using Dead Drop at any time by deleting the identity in Settings or deleting the app. We can end or suspend access to the relay, the mixnet or the directory for an app that breaks section 5 or attacks the service, and we can withdraw the service as a whole. Because there is no account, "ending" on our side means refusing a mailbox or a connection, not deleting anything of yours: what is on your phone stays on your phone. Sections 8 to 10, 13 and 16 survive.

12. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms we will change this page and the date at the top. Material changes will be pointed out inside the app before they apply to you. Using the app after a change means you accept it; if you do not, stop using the app and cancel any subscription with Apple.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of the State of Ohio, United States. The state and federal courts sitting in Stark County, Ohio have jurisdiction over any dispute about them, without taking away any protection the law of the place you live in gives you and does not let you waive.

14. Contact

15. General

These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about Dead Drop. If a court finds part of them unenforceable, the rest stands. You may not transfer your rights under these terms; we may transfer ours to a successor to the service. Our not enforcing a term is not a waiver of it.

16. Apple

This section applies because you got Dead Drop from the App Store.

• These terms are between you and Critical Mass Labs LLC only, not Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content.
• The licence in section 8 is limited to a non-transferable licence to use the app on Apple-branded products you own or control, as the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions allow.
• Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support for the app.
• If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the price paid for the app, if any. To the fullest extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app; everything else is between you and us.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the app or your use of it, including product liability claims, claims that the app fails to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and consumer protection or similar claims.
• If a third party claims the app infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement and discharge of that claim.
• You confirm that you are not in a country under a United States government embargo or designated a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• You must comply with any third-party terms that apply when using the app.
• Apple and Apple's subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms, and on your acceptance of them Apple has the right, and is taken to have accepted the right, to enforce them against you.