Share your secret password-protected messages online

Pay a visit to the Jotonce website and click the red ‘create new jot’ link in the upper right-hand corner of the page or the small ‘create a new jot’ link to the lower right of the passphrase field. A large text field will appear: type or paste some text here, bearing in mind that individual notes posted on Jotonce must be no longer than 4,000 characters. A character counter sits atop the field, providing a running tally of the remaining space.

Look to the left of the page and notice the Options section. If you’d like a read-confirmation email to be sent to you when the recipient has read the message, click the Read Receipt link and type in your email address. To improve the security of your message, click the Authentication link. Tap in the last four digits of the recipient’s phone number: they will be prompted to enter this information before the note can be read.

Now click Expiration and move the slider from left to right to indicate how long the note will remain available to be read – from 10 minutes to 10 days. When the set time has elapsed, the note will be automatically deleted.

Jotonce suggests a simple password, which is displayed under the Passphrase heading to the right of the text field page. However, for better security we’d suggest creating your own Passphrase – so click the ‘Create your own’ link and type the password into the box below. We now have multiple layers of security in place, which makes exchanging information this way much safer than relying on email alone.

With the basics configured, the note is ready to be posted online – just click the red Post Jot button to do this. There will be a slight pause then a message will appear indicating that the note has been successfully posted. If a password has been applied it will be displayed as a reminder now: this will need to be communicated to the recipient, perhaps over the phone or in an email.

To retrieve a note, the recipient needs to visit the Jotonce website, type the password into the text field and click the Retrieve my message button. If you made use of the Authentication option in Step 2, the recipient will additionally need to type in the last four digits of their phone number. Providing the note has not reached its expiry date, it will then be displayed ready for reading or copying.