Register on Seeld

You must register on Seeld to start using it.

It sounds obvious, but it can be scary too! Many applications might request a lot of private information during registration: your email, your real name, your birthday… or access to your phone contacts! That can be a problem…

Thankfully, Seeld requests very little data to register. And it encrypts the few slightly more sensitive bits of data it requires.

Register on Seeld

When registering, Seeld asks you three things. Yep, three things only!

Your pseudo: your unique pseudonym, and the only thing Seeld knows about you. Use your pseudo to login and to connect with persons you trust. Choose your pseudo wisely: you cannot change it. Also, bear in mind that we can see your pseudo in our database. Therefore if being on Seeld is a secret, do not use your first and last name as a pseudo!
Your display name: when two persons are connected on Seeld, they will see each other’s display name, if provided. Don’t worry: Seeld encrypts this information before it sends it to its servers. Even administrators will not be able to see what you have typed there! So use your real name if you want: only your trusted connections will see it.
Your passphrase: wait… not a password? Well a passphrase resembles a password, but longer and stronger. You can use sequences of words, or even a full sentence if you want. But by all means, don’t forget your passphrase! We will not be able to reset it for you. If we could, we would be tempted to snoop at your messages, right?
As you will see, the passphrase itself is actually never sent over the web.

Once you provide this data and click on the “Register” button, the fun stuff begins.

What happens when you click "Register"

Bear with me, or skip the next paragraph

You typed in a pseudo, a passphrase and a display name. First thing, KDF (Key Derivation Function) and SRP (Secure Remote Password) artifacts are generated. The KDF generates a derived passphrase from the passphrase you typed. Then the client proceeds to generate your encryption keys and protects them with that derived passphrase. The client also generates a random secret key, to protect your own mailbox. Subsequently, the client encrypts a payload, which contains your display name, your secret key and your encryption keys. Finally, we send the registration to the server, which generates a box address, a device storage key and an exchange key. The server stores all these things on database using the server’s own encryption key. That’s what Seeld knows about you on server.

You didn’t quite grasp everything? That’s okay! I myself must rely on diagrams and notes to remember how everything works.

Here’s what’s important to remember though: before the application sends anything to the server, the browser encrypts everything sensitive that identifies you, using your keys. But those keys are protected with a derived passphrase. We can only retrieve that derived passphrase from your original passphrase. And that original passphrase… never hits the network. The application never sends the original passphrase to the server.

As little data as possible to register...

When you register on Seeld, it asks the minimum amount of data to register. In the end it mostly generates the artifacts needed to function. Furthermore, it encrypts all that can be hidden from Seeld’s servers in a way that administrators cannot decrypt it.

Seeld does not want to information about you, or identify you, one way or another. Seeld wants to allow persons to exchange messages as securely and privately as possible.
That means we will not be able to thrive on selling your data to brokers. Too bad for us. But a good thing for you and all of our users!