If you're not a member, you can use public keys to encode and decode messages. Once a public key has been created (by encoding a message), it is valid for 4 days. After that, it expires, and you can't use it anymore for encoding or decoding messages.

When encoding a message, you can either leave the public key field empty, or use a key of your choice (max. 20 characters). I you leave it empty, a new public key will be created for you and shown in the corresponding field. If you choose to use a specific key, it doesn't matter whether it was already used before or not. If it was, the key will simply be re-used and if it wasn't, a new key with your chosen name will be created.

Either way it is important to remember the (generated) key, because you, and others, need it to decode the encoded message.

The message to be encoded must be at least 3 characters long. You can use punctuation marks, however newlines will be removed. Special characters like é or ü will be translated to e and u if possible. If not (even weirder characters), they will be removed as well.

You need a public key to decode an encoded message, do you cannot leave the public key field empty when decoding a message.

Don't modify an encoded message, because that will make the original message unrecoverable. However, you may add or delete newlines, if you want. They will be ignored when decoding.

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