Ordinary secrets deserve tidy exits.
Most secrets aren't dramatic. The Wi-Fi password for the guests, the door code for the dog-sitter, the account number your sibling needs exactly once. Today they all go in the chat — and stay there, in everyone's history and everyone's backups, long after they matter.
The problem with just texting it
Chat apps are archives wearing a casual outfit. That door code you texted the contractor in March is still in the thread in December — on your phone, on theirs, in both backups, synced to devices you've forgotten about. None of it is sinister; it's just that persistence is the default, and for a secret, persistence is the bug.
What BurnPony changes
- The chat keeps a link, not the code. Text 'gate code: [link]' and the thread's permanent record is a link that burned after reading. The code itself was encrypted on your phone and deleted from the server after its views ran out.
- Anyone can open it. Grandma on an old Android, the sitter on a work laptop — a modern browser is the only requirement. Nobody installs anything.
- It cleans up after both of you. A one-hour expiry means even an unread note evaporates. No remembering to delete messages, no asking them to.
- Reveal on their schedule, briefly. The viewer warns that the note self-destructs before they reveal it, and an optional auto-hide re-covers the text after 10–120 seconds — handy on a shared screen.
- In person, skip the network. Showing the QR code moves the whole link screen-to-camera. Nothing was ever sent anywhere.
Honest limits
Be honest with yourself about the recipient: someone who wants to keep the code will screenshot it, and that's fine — the point is the secret not sitting in infrastructure, not distrusting your dog-sitter. Sending notes needs an iPhone; reading them doesn't. And the link is the key, so for something genuinely serious, add a passphrase and say it out loud instead of relying on the chat channel alone.
A sensible pattern
- Keep the context in the chat ('gate code for Saturday:') and only the secret in the note.
- Default to 1 view and a short expiry; give flaky-connection relatives 2–3 views instead.
- For anything that guards money or health, add a passphrase and deliver it by voice.
- Rotate codes occasionally anyway — burn notes shrink exposure; they don't replace changing the locks.
Get BurnPony
Free self-destructing encrypted notes for iPhone. Recipients need only a browser. No accounts, no tracking.