Glossary

The words, explained.

Burn-after-reading tools hide behind a wall of jargon. Here's the small set of terms BurnPony actually uses, each in a sentence or two, with a fuller page behind it if you want the depth.

The cryptography 5

AES-256-GCM

The lock: authenticated encryption on every note.

HKDF

How link bytes become the actual key.

PBKDF2

600,000 iterations between a guess and your passphrase.

URL fragment

The part of the link browsers never send.

WebCrypto

Why the recipient's browser is the only app needed.

The lifecycle 5

Burn after reading

Reading it for the last time is what destroys it.

View limit

1 to 100 reads, enforced atomically.

Note expiry

1 hour to 30 days, read or not.

Management token

The sender's remote control — status and early burn.

Read receipt

Delivery confirmation, disclosed to the recipient.

The relay and trust 4

End-to-end encryption

Sealed on your phone, opened in their browser.

Zero-knowledge relay

A server that stores what it cannot read.

Identical 404s

Burned, expired, never existed: one indistinguishable answer.

Passphrase

The optional second factor, shared on a second channel.

Get BurnPony

Free self-destructing encrypted notes for iPhone. Recipients need only a browser. No accounts, no tracking.

Coming to the App Store — Notify me at launch