Lost or compromised phone

The problem this solves

SafePhrase trusts phones, not voices. So the one scenario that needs its own playbook is a trusted phone in the wrong hands: lost, stolen, or behaving in a way that worries you.

Two tools cover it, and they’re designed to be used together.

Step 1: Freeze the member

Any admin can freeze a member from that member’s page in the circle. Freezing stops that phone’s circle actions: it can no longer answer checks or send them.

Freezing is deliberately quiet. The frozen phone looks normal and its actions simply fail with ordinary-looking errors. Whoever is holding it learns nothing, which matters if the holder is exactly the person you’re worried about. The member is not notified.

If another circle member tries to challenge a frozen member, the app tells them checks are paused and to be extra careful with anything claiming to be that person in the meantime.

Freezing is instant and completely reversible. If the worry turns out to be nothing, unfreeze from the same page and everything resumes.

Step 2: Rotate the security key

If the phone is truly gone, freezing isn’t enough on its own, because the device still holds the circle’s secret and still shows valid phrases. From the circle screen, tap Rotate security key. Every current member’s phone receives the new key automatically and silently; the lost device keeps computing words that no longer match anyone, so anything it shows fails every check.

A member who was frozen (or offline for a long time) during a rotation ends up with an out-of-date key. The app flags this on both sides: they see that their phrase is out of date, and the admin sees a prompt to send them a fresh invite, which resyncs them in one tap with their verification level intact.

The short version

Phone in doubt: freeze first, ask questions after. Phone definitely gone: freeze, then rotate. Both are on the screens you’d expect: the member’s page and the circle page.