Private chats are used to talk with members of incognito groups without revealing your identities to each other. For safety, messages are routed through the server which runs the original incognito group, and private chat participants are assigned the same username and avatar that they had in the original group. Here is what you need to know about private chats:
- User identities are hidden from each other;
- Messages are routed though group server, then relayed to members;
- Chat history is stored on group server, and, possibly, on servers of private chat members;
- Once both members leave private chat, message history is removed from group server;
- There is no guarantee that message history will be removed from servers of private chat members. It's a federated protocol, after all!
- End-to-end encryption is unavailable for private chats, because every proper e2ee protocol relies on out-of-band fingerprint verifications. You can't verify an incognito participant out-of-band, because you don't even know who it is!