Questions, problems, or something that looks wrong — write to pembaapp@gmail.com and we'll come back to you. There's a button in the app too, under your profile, which fills in your version and account details so you don't have to.
Don't email us to report a card — report it in the app. Hold the card in your MailBox and choose Report. That sends us the card's message, so somebody can read exactly what it said, which an email cannot do: cards are encrypted and we have no way to look one up. Reporting also takes the card out of your mailbox, so if you want to show it to someone you trust first, do that before you report.
You can block the sender in the same step, and we'd suggest you do. Blocking works immediately; a report reaches a person.
We review reports within 24 hours. We don't send you a message about the outcome, but if you email us we'll tell you what we decided. The person you report isn't told who reported them.
For more on staying safe — for young people, parents and carers, and adults — see Staying safe on Pemba.
There are three ways: tick Block them too when you report a card, hold their row in Handles, or use Block someone… under Profile › Privacy, which takes a handle directly and works whether or not you've saved them.
A blocked account cannot send you a card at all — it's refused before the card is written, so they aren't charged a stamp and get no signal that it was you. Blocking also removes them from your saved handles, and unblocking doesn't put them back; you'd add them again from their handle. Unblock from the same place in your profile.
Cards land in MailBox as soon as they're sent. If one hasn't, check that you're both using the right @handle — a handle can change hands if somebody gives it up, so an old one may now belong to a different person. Also check whether they might be blocked.
Cards are opened with a key held on your own devices. If you signed in on a new phone and your iCloud Keychain hasn't finished syncing, cards can briefly refuse to open — they'll open once it has. If you deleted and remade your account, cards sent to the old one cannot be opened by anybody, including us. That's permanent, and it's the cost of nobody else being able to read them either.
Share links expire after 30 days. Send a fresh one.
Not at the moment. Once a card has gone it's in the other person's mailbox, and a link stays open for its 30 days.
Your @handle is how people find you, and it's unique. You can change it in your profile — your old one is held for 20 days before anybody else can take it, so a rename doesn't hand your name straight to somebody else, and you can change your mind.
Stamps are bought through the App Store and belong to your Pemba account, not to a device — signing in on a new phone brings them with you. Sending a card costs one.
Refunds for App Store purchases are handled by Apple rather than by us, at reportaproblem.apple.com. If Apple refunds a purchase, the stamps come back off the balance — never below zero — and the app tells you.
There's no Restore Purchases button, and that's deliberate rather than missing: stamps are consumable and are held against your account, so signing in is what brings them back.
Pemba can tell you when a card arrives, and remind you before an occasion. Both are optional and live in Profile › Notifications. Occasion reminders are scheduled on your phone, so they work with no signal; you can set how much notice you want, and any single occasion can have its own time and its own notice.
A card notification says a card arrived and nothing else — not even who from. That's on purpose: the sender's name is inside the sealed card, where our servers can't reach it.
You can delete your account from your profile in the app. It removes your cards, your handles and the account itself. Two things to know first, because neither can be undone:
What survives is listed in the privacy policy.
See the privacy policy and the terms of use.
Pemba — Staying safe · Privacy ·
Terms
Last updated: 30 September 2026