Semafore is a messaging tool that is designed for organisations, not private individuals. As such the visibility of whether a message is reported as seen or not is set by the organisation.

Note that this is the issuing of read receipts, regardless of organisation. If User A1 is in Organisation A and A has determined that user A1 will not issue read receipts, User B2 in Organisation B that does permit read receipts to be issued, will not be able to tell if User A1 has read or not read B2's' message. Meanwhile if A1 sends a message to B2, A1 will be able to tell if B2 has read it.

When Semafore is first opened, or opened after a period of being in the background, it connects to our server and conducts a 'cryptographic-handshake' to report that it is now online and able to receive / send messages. This opening up of a crypto tunnel takes a little while - cryptography (encryption) is mathematically challenging and hence the 'delay' whilst it completes.

1. end-to-end encryption
2. cannot be read on our servers
3. due to the advanced cryptography used we need to ensure no bad actors - hence only sold to organisations that have a footprint (ie listed in a government published corporate register)
4. all code libraries are either developed by ourselves or sit under our control - no ability for a bad actor to conduct a supply chain attack and introduce malicious code into an inherited library