Burn after reading.
The idea the app is named for. A note exists to be read a fixed number of times, and the act of reading it for the last time is what destroys it.
Burn after reading is a delivery model where the message is destroyed by the act of being read. BurnPony implements it literally: serving the final allowed view and deleting the ciphertext happen in the same database transaction.
What it is
Most channels are archives pretending to be conversations: chat logs, mail servers, and backups keep everything by default. A burn-after-reading note inverts that default — persistence requires effort, and the effortless outcome is deletion.
Why it matters
It bounds exposure in time. A password sent by text lives in that thread forever, on two phones and their backups. The same password in a burn note stops existing on the server the moment it's read, and there is nothing left to leak in next year's breach.
Related terms
Common questions.
Does burning delete the note from the recipient's screen?
No tool can do that. Burning prevents future fetches of the note; what is already displayed, remembered, copied, or photographed is outside any sender's control. Self-destruction limits future access, not the moment of reading.
Can a burned note be recovered?
No. The ciphertext row is deleted, and the server never had the decryption key in the first place. There is no backup of note contents to restore from, by design.
Get BurnPony
Free self-destructing encrypted notes for iPhone. Recipients need only a browser. No accounts, no tracking.