Frequently Asked Questions

Chatzy is a free private chat service which you can use to communicate with people you already know or people who visits your blog or website. With Chatzy you can create a chatroom and send out email invitations very quickly and easily. No registration is required.

Probably because you didn't invite anybody. The purpose of Chatzy is to provide you with private chat rooms in which you can chat with friends and family on the Internet without being disturbed. Nobody can join the chat if they have not been invited by you or one of the other participants.

If you didn't bookmark the chat room (as we asked you to), you may have a problem. However, most browsers "remember" where you have been, so the necessary address may pop up if you start typing "www.chatzy.com". Otherwise, try looking in the browser's history. The address should look like:

• http://www.chatzy.com/1234567890  (where 1234567890 is a unique ID number for the chat room)

If none of this works, you can easily create a new chat room.

Chatzy started out in 2001 as an experiment by a couple of Internet professionals with various full-time occupations, but has since grown into a small dedicated organization based in Europe. For legal information about Chatzy, please refer to our Terms of Use.

As it is costly to develop and run a quality chat service, we reserve a space in the chat rooms for a single commercial message which changes every two minutes and offer a Premium service along with our free chat (see "Subscriptions" section below).

Both are basically free. The most important differences are:

• The Quick Chat allows you to create a chat room and send out invitations, as quickly and easily as you would create a regular email. You cannot, however, specify room passwords or change the chat properties (such as the title/subject) after it starts.
• The Virtual Room gives you many more options. You can set permissions by email address, define passwords and custom welcome messages, enable/disable features, and much more. Furthermore, you can change all properties (such as the title) whenever you want.

No. The chatrooms are always open, regardless of whether the creator is present or not.

You are welcome to create a chat room and link to it from a Web page of your own. Think of it as a free hosted chat solution for your Web site. You simply use the chat room address from your browser. It should look like this:

• http://www.chatzy.com/1234567890  (where 1234567890 is a unique ID number for the chat room)

If you do this, we strongly recommend that you create a Virtual Room. The Quick Chat is primarily intended for private chats with trusted participants. In a Virtual Room, only you or somebody with the administrator password can clear the chat history, and you have the option of specifying a room password for accessing the chatroom.

Skins allow you to change the appearance of Chatzy, in terms of colors, background image and font style. A skin can be either a:

• Temporary Skin, suggested by any visitor in a room with the /skin command (or set directly using the /skin- command),
• Room Skin, defined by the administrator, under Room Properties (or applied with the /skin+ command),
• Device Skin, shown outside rooms or in rooms without a skin, and saved locally on your device (in a cookie),
• User Skin, defined under Account Preferences and recalled whenever you log onto a new device.

The skin types take precedence in the above order; e.g. a Room Skin always overrules a Device Skin. They all work the same way and can be easily copied using a Skin String.

A Skin String is a single string of characters (with no spaces) used to define a Chatzy Skin. Here is an example:

• B=0E0638&T=EDDAEA&L=FFFF00&F=Arial%2c+Helvetica%2c+%27Nimbus+Sans+L%27%2c+sans-serif&I=%2felements%2fcustom%2fbackgrounds%2fcity.jpg&

You can get Skin Strings by selecting the "Copy/paste Skin String" link in the Skin section on either the Account Preferences or Room Properties page.

Unless you have technical skills, don't try to edit the Skin String directly, as it contains an encoded version of the (non-default) values from the Skin section.

Yes. Chatzy used to be primarily a real-time chat system, but it can also be used as a simple blog or message board. Make sure to create a Virtual Room for this purpose, though.

A chatroom which is used regularly will stay open indefinitely. In order to save space on our system, chat rooms that have not been modified (written to) within 14 days may be deleted. This should not be a problem, since you can always just create a new chat room when you need to chat again.

Premium Rooms (our paid subscription) will be kept open for a minimum of 6 months, from the time they were last used. If they are modified regularly, they will stay open indefinitely.

To save a link to the live chat room so you can continue the chat at a later time, either:

• Right-click on the chat room name (just below the Chatzy logo) and choose "Add to Favorites" (or similar) on the menu that appears, or
• (Left) click on the room title and copy/paste the room link manually. The link should look like this: http://www.chatzy.com/1234567890, where 1234567890 is a number which uniquely identifies the chat room.

Notice that if you register your email address with Chatzy, we will remember all your rooms for you and you won't have to save any links.

To save the chat room history for your records, click "Save / Print" in the left menu. From the form that opens up, you can view/save/print previous chat history by the page. You can choose between visible and cleared content (the latter only if you are allowed to view cleared content).

• In order to make very large (50 MB+) chat rooms easier to download, we periodically archive cleared content. When archiving, cleared content is compressed and saved in a small number of large files. This adds a third download option to the form.
• Normally, we do not archive visible content. To help us archive your room for easier download, please clear the chat once in a while. Rooms that have more than 50 MB of visible content may be retroactively cleared by the system (leaving the last 10,000 lines of chat in the visible area).

To put the above numbers into perspective, the Bible (old and new testaments combined) takes up less than 5 MB of space, and a typical novel (e.g. "1984" by George Orwell) contains about 5,000 sentences.

You cannot remove a chat room in itself. But you can clear the entire chat history (select "Clear Chat" on the menu) so nobody can see what was written previously. Also, chat rooms not used for a period of time will be deleted automatically (see previous question).

We really don't want to interfere in the rooms, but, as stated in our Terms of Use, we may exceptionally appoint new Administrators in public and highly active rooms, where no Administrator or Moderator has been present in a long time. We do this to ensure the continued, legal operation of our rooms.

To make sure the new Admin is responsible enough to take over a room, we only give admin rights to paying users (since these have been positively identified through their payment). Furthermore, we always give back administrator rights, if the original owner returns.

If you are admin of a room, but no longer wish to maintain it, you can effectively disable the room by setting a secret room password. This will make sure that the above scenario does not enter into play, since we only transfer admin rights for active rooms.

Quick Chats are meant to be quickly created, used for a chat or two and then discarded, but if a specific Quick Chat address has become established among you and your friends, you may want it to have Virtual Room features.

If you upgrade a Quick Chat to Premium, it gets automatically converted to a Virtual Room with access control, custom URL and all the other options. Of course, the room also gets all the premium features such as custom URL, timeout settings, etc.

The room administrator password is automatically set to the item number from the payment (make a note of it when you pay or look it up in your receipt email – it is a 14-digit number, but not the same as the room address number). With this, you can enter the room as administrator, register your email as the room owner email and change the admin password to something you can remember.

Please notice that we are not able to decide who is the most legitimate administrator of a Quick Chat. Anyone who knows the room address can "take control" of a Quick Chat by making it Premium.

If you are registered with Chatzy yourself and if you are creating a Virtual Room, the "Allow to enter" box under Room Properties gives you three options for authenticating users:

• You can allow all users who know the particular chatroom address (e.g. chatzy.com/123456789012). You will NOT be able to ban individual users with this option.
• You can allow only users whose email address has been confirmed by Chatzy (registered users). It doesn't matter if the users have been invited or not.
• You can allow only registered users who have received an email invitation for the room or been added manually to the visitor list (or who know the admin password).

Notice that you cannot define a room password with the last option, because there is no need for it – you must explicitly invite all users for the room (and you can always ban a user who was previously invited).

It is very simple. Go to the front page, enter your name, one or more email addresses to send the invitation to and a subject for the chat. We will then send out an email invitation immediately. You can also send out invitations directly from a chat room by clicking on "invite people" on top of the page and filling out the form that appears.

When you start a Quick Chat or at any time after the chat starts (also in Virtual Rooms), you can send out email invitations.

Enter a single email address or multiple addresses, separated by comma.

We then immediately send out an invitation with your message, a link to the room, and a short footer (containing no ads whatsoever). The addresses are never used for any other purpose, as outlined in our strict Privacy Policy.

Notice that, in Quick Chats, email addresses are always hidden. In Virtual Rooms, only the room administrator can see them on the visitor list.

No. The chatrooms are open at all times. The invitations are just a means of communicating the chat room address, which is needed in order to enter the chatroom. The recipients can save the address and access the chatroom at any time.

There are several possibilities:

• First of all, please double-check the address. You would be surprised how many of our users are sending email invitations to non-existent addresses like johndoe@yaho.com (instead of yahoo.com). Unfortunately, our system is not capable of telling you whether the email reached its recipient or not.
• Online email services (such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail), as well as many email programs (such as Microsoft Outlook) have spam filters. Although it should not happen, some of Chatzy's invitations may be detected as spam and end up in a bulk/spam folder. Please ask your recipient to check whether this is the case. There is usually an option to report to the email service/program that the invitations are not spam.
• Another possible explanation is that you are sending email invitations to a mailbox, which require that senders be registered for some kind of membership. Yahoo! Groups, for instance, has this requirement. You may be registered and perfectly able to send email yourself, but if Chatzy is not part of the group, our email invitations will be returned and never read by their recipients.

In addition to the normal login procedure where you enter your email address, get a confirmation email, and choose a password, you can log into Chatzy with any of these third-parties (click on the link to edit your authorized apps):

• Facebook. The world's largest social network.
• Google+ used with numerous Google services, Android phones, etc.
• Windows Live. Microsoft's ID service used with Bing, Outlook.com, OneDrive, Windows Phone, etc.
• LinkedIn. Leading employment-oriented social networking service.

If you are curious about which limited information we get from these third parties, please check out our Privacy Policy.

In a Quick Chat, you cannot "uninvite" people (but you can always start a new chat and make sure not to invite the unwanted person). In a Virtual Room, you can either change the password or exclude the user in the visitor list by clicking on the icon in the right side of the row.

As administrator or Moderator in a virtual room, you can ban unwanted users.

• If they are registered users of Chatzy, you can ban them permanently by email address.
• If not, you can block them by IP address.

Notice that you cannot ban or silence people reliably, if the room is open for unregistered users – a banned visitor can just enter again under another name.

To prevent unregistered users from entering your room, select the appropriate option in the "Allow to enter" box under Room Properties.

Alternatively, you can choose to Silence Newbies automatically.

In a Chatzy room, visitors are authorized at five levels:

• Administrators can do everything, including change room properties and appoint Moderators. If you share the admin password, make sure to activate owner protection at the bottom of Room Properties first.
• Moderators can let in, silence, kick out, or ban visitors, and – depending on the permissions under Room Properties – view the Visitor List, clear the room, send Global Messages, etc.
• Trusted visitors have been trusted either manually by a Moderator, or automatically by the system. Certain functions can be reserved for trusted (as opposed to non-trusted) visitors. By default, the system trusts registered visitors, but this can be changed in the "Trust newbies" setting under Room Properties.
• Normal visitors participate in the chat without any special rights (unless this has been changed under Room Properties).
• Silenced visitors can only watch the chat, not participate. They can only exchange PMs with Admins and Moderators (when PMs are enabled).

Notice that Visitor Ranks apply to Virtual Rooms only (not Quick Chats).

Moderators are priviledged visitors; the second of five Visitor Ranks. A moderator cannot change any room properties, but he/she can:

• Kick out, ban, block or let in visitors,
• Exchange Personal Messages, even with silenced visitors or ranks that are not allowed to use PMs,
• Clear the room.

Only the administrator can appoint moderators and only in Virtual Rooms (not Quick Chats):

• Visitors with a registered email can be appointed permanently,
• Unregistered visitors can be appointed temporarily (until they leave the room),
• Offline unregistered visitors cannot be appointed.

By default, Chatzy allows the use of proxies, including the TOR browser, for registered users.

The TOR browser enables users to enter a room without revealing their real IP address. Chatzy always hides a visitor's full IP address, however, so there is no reason to use TOR for this purpose.

In some cases, proxies are necessary to avoid restrictions in a user's local network. More often, they are used by trolls to prevent themselves from being recognized or banned by IP.

Room administrators can now block TOR users by deselecting:
Room Properties => Allow visitors to: => [x] Enter via TOR browser

Click on the visitor icon next to the checkbox, if you want to exempt Moderators or registered users from the block.

Chatzy was designed to work without the users needing to sign up. We do, however, offer some advantages to the users that confirm their email address:

• As a registered user, you have a "My Rooms" list where all rooms you enter, create or get invited to are automatically saved.
• For each of your rooms, preferences such as name and color will be saved for next time you return.
• You can set invitation permissions, e.g. you can specify that nobody or only registered users may send you invitations.
• You can enter into rooms where the owner only allows users with a confirmed email to enter.

Signing up is, of course, free and only takes a minute.

When you are logged into Chatzy with your email address, it can be used to identify you towards room administrators in certain cases:

• In Quick Chats, there is no room administrator and, consequently, nobody can see your email.
• In Virtual Rooms, only the room administrator can see it. Your email is hidden for all other users, even Moderators. And if you have selected a Chatzy ID, nobody can see your email address anymore.

For security reasons, and to avoid confusion in rooms you have been invited to or participated in, you cannot change your account email.

In case you get a new email address, you will have to reenter your rooms manually and ask administrators of protected chat rooms to invite you again.

If, for one reason or another, you no longer wish to use Chatzy, we recommend the following actions:

• Select the "Never send me invitations" option under Account Preferences.
• Change your personal password to a long, random string.
• Go to "My Rooms" and remove all items from your personal room list by clicking on the X to the right of each room.

That's it! Technically, we will still have a record with your email address, but you will never hear from us again. In fact, if we deleted your email record, we would not be able to prevent people from sending you chat invitations.

We do not recommend that you delete your account completely, but if you insist, it can be done here after signing in.

With content rules, you can highlight or hide certain words, as well as block/warn/kick the user posting them. Rules can help you minimize faul language or off topic discussions, or they can be used to provide tips related to the topic of your room. Content rules can always be tricked by humans, so use them for guidance more than anything else.

To enable, use the /rules command or click Room Actions... => Content Rules

Notice that Content Rules are word, not sentence, based. If you enter a sentence, like "I need help", then "I" and "need" and "help" will each trigger the rule, also in other sentences! To include a specific sentence, replace all spaces with underscores. E.g. "I_need_help" will trigger only when someone writes the full sentence "I need help".

Use ? to match any character, and * to match any string (including none). The matching is not case-sensitive. For example:

• h?t matches "Hat", "hat", "hit", "hot", etc.
• ass* *ass matches any word that starts or ends with "ass"
• *dick* matches any word that has "dick" in it. Also Charles Dickens, unfortunately :)

For technical reasons, backslashes (\) and pipe characters (|) cannot be used.

You can create up to 10 rules, or 20 in Premium Rooms. To delete a rule, simply delete all words in the first text field before pressing OK.

Chatzy supports thousands of emojis, or font icons, like 😉💗🐨🌵💃.

Insert emojis in the chat by clicking on the smiley icon to the right of the input field (use TAB + ENTER as a shortcut), or copy/paste from our Emoji Library.

These emojis are represented by a single unicode character and are recognized by all modern operating systems, including all versions of iOS and Android, as well as Windows 7/8/10, and OS X version 10.7 and newer. If you are on an older operating system, like Windows XP, you may see white squares instead of colorful icons – try to fix it by installing a new emoji font.

By default, for increased readability, emojis are shown 30% bigger than normal text in the chat. This can be adjusted per device according to your preferences. Tell me more.

Usually, it is not necessary, but the room administrator can block or limit the usage of emojis in a room with the /set MaxEmojisInAlias and /set MaxEmojisPerPost commands.

Chatzy provides 24 image-based emoticons, some of which are animated. For example:

To include emoticons in your chat posts, enter its keyword in double square brackets. For instance, to include the "hug" emoticon, enter [[hug]].

Alternatively, you can open this dialog box from inside the room by holding down SHIFT while pressing the smiley icon to the right of the input field. (If you are on a touch device, just click without SHIFT and choose "Emoticons" in the dialog that opens up.)

To avoid misuse, there is a default limit of one emoticon per post. Room admins can change this number using the /set MaxIconsPerPost command, followed by a number between 0 (= disable emoticons) and 99 (= allow max).

This function automatically replaces text as you type. Use it to quickly enter frequently used Emojis (Font Icons) or text strings in the chat.

By default, 24 common emoji strings are replaced to their graphical equivalent. For instance, :) converts to 🙂, <3 to 💗, and +1 to 👍.

You can also define your own custom replacements and replace any word (a string without spaces) with a character, word or string of your choice. You can define up to 100 replacements, with a total of 1000 characters.

The function can be easily enabled or disabled from inside the chatrooms.

Use Rank Selectors to hide text from specific visitor groups. Everybody can use them in their Visitor Status; Admins and Mods can also use them in Mod-notes, in the Room Board, in the Welcome Box, and in Global Messages.

A selector is always a set of square brackets containing two numbers between 1 and 5. The numbers represents the Visitor Ranks allowed to see the text. For example:

• Text after [1-2] is shown to Admins and Moderators (ranks 1 and 2),
• Text after [3-3] is shown to Trusted visitors only (rank 3),
• Text after [4-5] is shown to Normal and Silenced visitors (ranks 4 and 5),
• Text after [1-5] is shown to everyone – thus, it "cancels out" previous selectors.

Notice that the selector must always include two numbers, even if the number is the same. The selectors can be placed both at the beginning or at the middle of a paragraph, however, they are more often used in the beginning. See more examples.

NB: Do not use [1-1] as a way to keep secrets from other Moderators. Anybody with permission to edit a given text, e.g. Mod-notes or the Room Board, can see the full source, including [1-1] items.

In any multi-line field, you can do the following:

• Create a bullet indent by starting a line with ~ (+ space),
• Number consecutive lines by starting each line with # (+ space),
• Create a horizontal line by entering a line containing exactly five dashes (-----),
• Use tags [b] for bold, [i] for italics, [u] for underlined, [s] for strike-through, and [h] for hidden text. Finish the tag with a slash, e.g.: [b]This will be bold[/b]. This will not.
• Insert the current room title with a {title} tag,
• Insert Emoticons (Image Icons) using double square brackets, e.g.: [[grin]]
• Insert Emojis (Font Icons) by using Shortcut Keys

NB: To enter a line-break in a single-line field, press SHIFT + ENTER.

In order to make it easy to format text using bold, italics, underlined, etc., a number of common keyboard shortcuts are supported. They can be applied while typing, or after a word/piece of text has been selected.

In case these shortcuts conflict with existing browser or OS shortcuts, they can be turned off here. Since the shortcuts are only active when focus is in the input field (typing), however, this should not be necessary.

Use the /keys command to display available shortcuts (or enable/disable) while chatting.

If permitted under Room Properties, visitors can post multi-line messages, by either:

• Using the large, multi-line form (show it by entering the /message or /m command, or click "Write Message" in the bottom area), or
• Inserting line-breaks directly into their chat posts by pressing SHIFT + ENTER while the input field is extended (enter /input or /3, or click on the small triangle just above the input field).

In a Multi-line Message, you can make bulleted or numbered lists by starting a line with a tilde (~) or a hash sign (#), followed by a space:

To finish a bulleted or numbered list, insert an empty line below it (a single line break continues the style).

In a Multi-line Message, you can insert a horizontal line like the one right below by entering exactly five dashes (-----) on a separate line:

Any web address (URL) beginning with http: or https: is automatically converted into a clickable link.

You can also post links showing a text other than the web address, by typing a label in quotes immediately after the URL:

• http://www.somedomain.com/somepath/somefile"your label"

The label must be between 2 and 50 characters long and surrounded by double quotes. For security reasons, only letters and spaces are allowed in the label (dots, slashes, etc. could be used to make other visitors believe that they are looking at an actual web address). Space between the URL and the first quote sign is optional.

When you post any YouTube or Vimeo video in your room, the original video thumbnail and description are automatically retrieved and shown.

When a visitor clicks on the video thumbnail, the video is played inside the room and the visitor's icon changes to show other visitors that he/she is watching the video. (Visitors can also hold down CTRL or SHIFT before clicking in order to play the video in a separate window.)

Room administrators have the possibility to disable this feature. Video thumbnails are, however, 100% safe and we recommend enabling them by default, as visitors can easily turn them on or off (by clicking on the small video icon in the top-right corner of the chatroom).

You can easily post images from the internet into your room. Simply include any URL (internet address) ending in .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .webp, or .png in your chat post and it will be automatically converted to an inline image. You can also post it using the /image command followed by the URL of the image.

If the image is on your computer, you must first upload it to a free file-sharing service like Dropbox, ImageShack, or another one.

The image shows up in your room as long as it is available at the specified web address. For security reasons, only registered users can post images.

Currently, Chatzy does not support Web cams. We are considering whether or not we should include this feature in a future version.

Chatzy does not allow the embedding of custom HTML or JavaScript code – although we do provide certain equivalents such [b]...[/b] instead of <b>...</b>.

The idea with Chatzy was never to offer fancy features for advanced users, but a simple chat system which works everywhere and which everyone can use. The more features you add, the more complex the system gets and the higher the risk of bugs and security breaches.

A very small number of our users don't know how to behave. They copy/paste large chunks of random text (such as "qweqwe qweqwe qweqwe" etc.) into the rooms they are visiting just to annoy people. To prevent this, we have implemented an anti-spam filter which limits the amount of text that can come from a single IP address (a computer address) within a five-minute interval.

This limit will not be reached by simply typing very fast. If you get a spam message from the system, chances are that you have been copying precomposed chunks of text into the room. This is of course OK if the text is relevant for the room. Since our system cannot distinguish relevant text from nonsense text, however, there may be a few "false positives". Here is what you can do if that happens to you:

• First of all, register with Chatzy (it's free and takes one minute). The limit for registered users is higher, simply because we assume that anonymous users are more likely to spam.
• Ask the room administrator to give you permission to "Paste long texts" under Room Properties. When this box is checked, the system allows much more text to be pasted to a room without showing the spam warning. The limit is especially high in Premium Rooms, which are suitable for use from a single location such as a computer lab or a company network with only one IP address.
• The limit for administrators in Virtual Rooms is high by default (if people spam their own room, it just means nobody will visit it). In Quick Chats, the default level cannot be changed, but registered and Premium Users still have high limits.

Taking the above into consideration, you shouldn't have any problems. If you have just gotten the spam message, you may have to wait up to five minutes. Within this period, please don't paste long messages; it will extend the ban period. To know when you can continue, try pasting a small message once every minute.

In Review Mode (available from the left menu), visitors can jump around in the history of the chat, as well as bookmark and erase individual posts:

• Bookmark posts by clicking on the icon to the right of each post,
• Erase (or restore) posts by clicking on the icons, if you have permission to do so.

By default, the ability to erase/restore posts is reserved for Administrators and Moderators, but this can be changed with the "Erase posts" item, in the "Access & Permissions" section under Room Properties.

The visitor status is a personal message that is displayed on the Visitor List, as well as when visitors mouse over the visitor icons in the Visitor Pane.

You can change your status as often as you want, either by clicking on your own icon in the Visitor Pane (when shown), or by typing one of the following commands:

• /status <message> updates your online status.
• /away <message> marks you away and sets an away message. You can tell people what you are doing or when you are coming back.
• /leave <message> makes you exit the room, leaving a message that everybody can see while you are offline.

Like most properties on Chatzy, the visitor status is a per-room setting, i.e. you can have as many different visitor statuses as you have rooms.

When available, Mod-notes are shown next to the visitor status.

Mod-notes are comments written by a Moderator about a specific visitor. They are shown together with the Visitor Status and always in italics, to set them apart from the latter.

Click on the icon above the Visitor Pane on the right side of the chat window (in Desktop View) to show the moderator notes and/or the visitor status.

Click on the N or S icon to toggle between mod-notes and status (icons only appear when both are filled in for a given visitor).

To show (part of) the text only to Moderators or other groups, use Rank Selectors.

A private message is an instant message exchanged between two visitors. No one else in the chatroom can see these messages, not even the Room Admin.

You can send a private message in two ways:

• By clicking on the visitor's name in the visitor list on the right (when shown).
• By typing /pm [name] [message] in the chat. (Put the name in "quotes" if it contains spaces.)

When a message is sent to an online visitor, it is delivered immediately. If a message is sent to an offline (gray) visitor, it will be delivered the next time he/she enters the room. Until the message is delivered, it can be changed or deleted.

PMs can be enabled or disabled for different Visitor Ranks in the "Allow visitors to" Room Property:

• Admins and Moderators can send/receive PM's to/from anyone, even Silenced visitors.
• Below Moderator level, both the sender and the recipient must be enabled.
• Silenced visitors can never send/receive to/from anyone else than Admins and Moderators.

Private messages are a premium feature. It means that all visitors in Premium Rooms as well as Premium Users in any room can send and receive PMs, if enabled under Room Properties.

Personal Messages that you have sent or received, either in your current room or in all rooms (if you are not currently in one), can be reviewed under "My Messages".

The messages are only stored locally, in your browser. Chatzy immediately deletes PM's from the server, when they are delivered to the recipient.

The messages are kept indefinitely in supporting browsers even after you leave the room, until:

• You manually delete them from the "My Messages" page,
• You clear or block cookies in the browser (this also clears local storage), or
• You close the browser tab and you are logged in without the "Keep me logged in on this device" option selected on the sign-in page (indicating that you are on a shared computer).

If you want, you can stop saving messages in this browser at any time.

Under "My Messages", three types of Personal Messages are shown:

• Received Messages. These PM's start with the sender name in its usual color, followed by a colon and normal color text,
• Sent Messages. These are dimmed down, with a comma after the recipient name. The time stamp to the right (if enabled) tells when the PM was sent (not when or if it was delivered or read),
• System Messages related to a specific person (e.g. if you were banned by a Moderator or if you kicked out a visitor yourself) are grayed out and marked with a leading ▣

From inside a room, you can click on any sender/recipient to send a new PM or perform other actions related to that visitor. More about Private Messages.

These messages are normally saved in your browser, until you delete them, or until cookies are cleared. Tell me more

Global Messages work just like Private Messages, only they are immediately delivered to everyone currently in the room.

By default, only Administrators and Moderators can send Global Messages, but this can be changed under Room Properties.

To send a Global Message, select "Room Actions..." in the left menu, then "Send Global Message", or use the /gm command.

The Room Board is a small text area usually shown on top of the room (opposite the chat text field) with a moving or static text.

By default, the text message in the Room Board moves right-to-left (or bottom-up) as in a news ticker if it cannot fit onto the screen in its entirety.

In Premium Rooms, you can modify the text as often as you want and choose whether the text should tick/move, be highlighted, etc.

Normally, only Administrators and Moderators can edit the Room Board, but this can be changed under Room Properties.

To edit the Room Board, simply click on it, or use the /rb command.

Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) are questions or polls with a predefined or open number of answers. Each visitor can answer the MCQ only once and change his/her answer as long as the MCQ is open.

Since only one MCQ can be asked at a time, they should be closed when enough responses have been received. An MCQ can, however, also be kept open indefinitely, in order to continuously measure the visitors' view on any subject (e.g. "How are you feeling today?").

There are several other options, including whether or not responses should be posted in the room or kept private, and whether visitors entering the room should be asked automatically or not.

The feature is available in all Virtual Rooms (not Quick Chats).

By default, only Administrators and Moderators can ask Multiple Choice Questions, but this can be changed under Room Properties. Only the questioner (the person who submitted the MCQ) and Admins/Moderators can close them.

To ask an MCQ, click on "Room Actions..." in the left menu, then "Ask/answer question", or use the /ask command.

By default, Administrators and Moderators enter the room without joining the chat. From this "Preview Mode", they can follow the conversation silently or prepare for an upcoming chat without triggering any system messages ("Xxx joined the chat").

Notice that all users preview without joining the chat if they have been silenced or if the chat is closed.

By default, Administrators and Moderators can choose to close a chat, for instance when they are not present. This is done with the following commands from the chat prompt:

• /close closes the chat. Until it is reopened, normal users cannot post, only read and leave the chat.
• /open reopens the chat for posting and joining.

Moderators (or visitors with the right to close/reopen the chat, as set under Room Properties) are also able to post to the room while it's closed, although they get a reminder each time they do so.

Newbies are visitors that enter the room for the first time and without an invitation. In Premium Rooms, they can be silenced automatically.

The silencing option is found under Room Properties => Newbies, and can be applied to either:

• All new visitors,
• Unregistered users (users that have not signed up with Chatzy), or
• Unregistered and registered users that have been signed up for less than 24 hours.

Newbies are silenced, either until a Room Moderator manually unsilences them, or for a predefined amount of time.

You can hide new posts and PM's (Personal Messages) from selected visitors in several ways:

• Enter the "/ignore" command, followed by the full name of the visitor to ignore,
• Click on the visitor in the Visitor Pane, then on "Ignore visitor" in the footnote,
• Click on "Ignore Visitors" under "My Preferences" and enter a name manually, optionally with wildcards.

Your choices are saved locally in your browser and apply to all rooms you enter from that browser. Ignored visitors get an icon in the Visitor Pane.

Everything ignored visitors say or do will be hidden from your main view. However, if the appropriate checkbox is selected, Chatzy will:

• Display a system message saying "xxx was ignored" for every hidden post,
• Save PM's in "My Messages" (without popping up or triggering Message Alerts).

Hidden posts can be shown simply by refreshing the room.

This function highlights specific words or strings in the chat posts on your current device.

Use ? to match any character, and * to match any string (including none). The matching is not case-sensitive. For example:

• h?t matches "Hat", "hat", "hit", "hot", etc.
• *man* matches "batman", "manners", "emancipated", etc.

Notice that matching is word, not sentence, based. If you enter e.g. "Santa Claus", then any message containing either "Santa" or "Claus" will trigger the alert, including both "Santa Monica" and "Claus von Bülow". To include a specific sentence or multiple words, replace all spaces with underscores, e.g. "Santa_Claus".

The string you enter will be saved for next time you enter a room.

You can activate the function under "My Preferences..." or by using the /hw command.

When you enter a room, Chatzy can estimate your current location based on your IP address. This location can be shown in the visitor pane on the right (click the icon to enable) or included in any system message using the {Location} tag.

Depending on your choice and the room settings, Chatzy will show either:

• Your city, including country flag, e.g. Paris
• Your country, e.g. France
• Your partial IP address, e.g. x.x.x.123

Notice that this is only an estimate and errors may occur.

You can define a personal default under Account Preferences, which can be overridden on each device. It can also be changed temporarily every time you enter a room.

We believe so. Chatzy is based entirely on the JavaScript that is built into all web browsers – it does not rely on Sun Java, Adobe Flash, or any other plug-in or applet that the user has to install first. Furthermore, Chatzy uses standard web technology (not any obscure ports or protocols) and should therefore be able to pass through corporate firewalls without any problems.

Chatzy has been thoroughly tested with the latest version of the major browsers:

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Microsoft Edge on Windows
• Apple Safari on OS X or iOS
• Mobile Chatzy: iPhone + Android browsers (WebKit)

It is our aim that Chatzy continues to work in older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6-8, but we highly recommend upgrading to one of the above, more modern browsers.

We want as many people as possible to use Chatzy, but at the same time we need to make enough money to pay for our high-performance chat servers:

• In free rooms, we have had to set a limit the 10 concurrent visitors. Of course, this limit does not apply to Premium Users – these can enter freely and they do not take up free spots.
• In Premium Rooms, there is no limit. We recommend a maximum of 100-150 people in order for the chat to work efficiently between the participants, but the system can easily cope with many more (we have had chats with more than 1,000 participants in one room!).
• If there are more than 120 people in a room, our system changes to "bulk mode", which means that the visitor list stops keeping track of who is in the room. You can still see all visitors in the order they enter the room, but you won't know for sure when they leave.
• If your room has 500-1000 concurrent visitors or more, we may, if the room causes server problems, have to impose a temporary limit of 500 people. Until now, we have never had to do this and if it happens, we will give you a full refund on your latest payment.

We believe 500 people in a room should be enough for all kinds of normal chat. If you need to communicate to/with more than 500 people, Twitter is probably a better choice than Chatzy.

Maybe because your Internet connection is not fast enough. Due to the way Chatzy functions, there is a short delay from when a user writes a message to the moment it shows up on your screen. With a good Internet connection (such as cable/DSL), this delay should be no more than 0.5-2 seconds during normal activity.

When you have been inactivity in a room for a period of time, you are asked to confirm that you are still following it. If you don't respond within a certain time, you will be logged out automatically. This saves free spots and system resources for more active users.

In a Premium Room, the timeout values is set by the administrator. In a free room, the timeout depends on the number of visitors in the room:

• 60 minutes if there are 6 or fewer visitors in the room
• 50, 40, 30 or 20 minutes, respectively, if there are 7, 8, 9 or 10 visitors
• 15 minutes if people are waiting in line to enter the room (more than 10 visitors).

Premium Users never time out and they don't take up space for non-paying users.

If the vertical pane to the right inside your rooms does not show a list of visitors, it is most likely due to an ad-blocker running on your computer. Ad-blockers are available as add-ins for many browsers (e.g. Google Chrome) and the most aggressive ones sometimes disable our requests to update the visitor list.

To fix this issue, simply add Chatzy.com (or *.chatzy.com) to your ad-blocker's list of trusted/ignored domains.

Since we started back in 2001, we have had only very few short periods of downtime, and typically in the order of 10-20 minutes. We realize uptime is very important for our users and we do everything we can to get as close to 100% as possible.

We used to restart our servers weekly, but this is no longer necessary.

When determining your physical location, we use publicly available data which links IP address ranges with cities and countries. Sometimes, these IP ranges get reallocated from one ISP to another and it takes a few weeks for the databases to be updated.

We use two different databases for determining city and country (from two different sources), so you may actually get different results if you choose to show your city vs. if you show your country.

Many browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) now require interaction before allowing a webpage to auto-play sounds. Any click on the page, even in a blank space, counts as interaction. You may have to interact every time you enter a room.

To get around this requirement, you can allow your browser to always play sound at Chatzy:

• Google Chrome: type "chrome://settings/content/sound" in the address bar, locate the "Allow" section, and add: *.chatzy.com
• Mozilla Firefox: go to Settings, search for "sound", locate the "Block websites from automatically playing sound" option, click "Exceptions", and add: *.chatzy.com
• Apple Safari: Click Safari > Settings for This Website > Auto-Play > Allow Media with Sound
• Microsoft Edge is currently not blocking auto-play, so no action is required.

If Message Alerts are turned on and we detect that sound is being blocked, we show a warning that you need to interact with the page.

The way Chatzy distinguishes between your chat room and everyone else's is by giving it an ID number. This ID number is between 0 and a trillion (up to 12 digits). That means, if anyone can guess a number in a trillion, they can access your chat room. Not very likely, is it?

Chatzy is very safe to use:

• First of all, Chatzy does not install any programs on your computer, but relies on JavaScript commands which are carried out by your Internet browser. Thus, if you trust your Internet browser (which you normally can), you can trust the Chatzy service – contrary to independent chat and instant messaging programs which may or may not include bugs or spyware.
• Secondly, there is no way Chatzy can transfer a virus or execute code from another chat user on your computer. The only thing that passes from one chatter to the others is plain text. All HTML tags, and thereby embedded code of any kind, is filtered away. Consequently, there is no need for virus protection in relation to Chatzy.

No, we do not. Furthermore, we never use pop-up/pop-under windows and we try to avoid flashy, disturbing banners.

Well, first of all, you are the one who decides where to spend your time. If you don't like the language in a specific chatroom, we suggest that you don't visit it. It's that simple.

However, in very serious cases, you are free to contact the police. As explained in our privacy policy, we are able to identify individual users by means of their IP address and we are willing to help police or similar authorities in their investigations. We do NOT, however, disclose IP addresses to private users. If your complaint is not serious enough for the police, it is not serious enough for us either.

Fortunately, we have never received a request from the police to disclose an IP address related to such matters and we hope we never will.

As a measure towards the 0.1% of our users who do not know how to behave themselves, we are displaying a user's partial IP addresses for log-in and rename actions. This makes it more difficult for the mentioned 0.1% to log in as multiple or different (fake) identities in the same chatroom. Furthermore, it clearly shows everybody that we are logging IP addresses, which we hope will deter malicious or deceitful behavior.

An IP address is a number, which all computers on the internet have and which people can usually not change. The number could for instance be 120.121.122.123, which we would display as X.X.X.123. This gives a good indication of which computer the user is behind without compromising the safety/privacy of the user by revealing the full IP address. We realize that it is not the perfect security measure (a deceitful user may still use multiple computers), but it is better than nothing.

In a Quick Chat, you have no control of people, once you have let them in. Your only option is to stop using the room and move your trusted friends or visitors to another room by sending them the new chatroom address.

In a Virtual Room, you can ban or explicitly allow users based on their email address. You can also change the room password from time to time. Of course, these options only apply if you have the administrator password for the chatroom.

This behavior has nothing to do with Chatzy – it is a feature of your Web browser (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer).

Fortunately, it is easy to disable. Simply find this checkbox and uncheck it:

• In Internet Explorer: Tools menu => Internet Options (last menu item) => Content (tab) => AutoComplete (button) => Use AutoComplete for Forms (checkbox)
• In Mozilla Firefox: Tools menu => Options (last menu item) => Privacy (tab) => Remember what I enter in forms and the search bar (checkbox)

User scripts are pieces of javascript that operate on your computer via an extension in your browser.

According to our Terms of Use, user scripts designed specifically to modify the behavior of Chatzy are not permitted. Rooms or user accounts promoting such tools may be closed.

Please also notice that, unless you are a skilled programmers, installing user scripts made by others makes you highly vulnerable to them stealing your password and hijacking your account. We have seen examples of this in the past. Never install anything given to you by people you don't know and trust 100%.

If you choose to show images, you will automatically see Internet Images posted by other visitors in the room.

Internet images are not hosted on the chat server, but automatically retrieved by your browser from other internet domains. It means that the address of the chat room and visitor IP addresses are exposed to the image servers and their administrators.

From a security point of view, showing images automatically corresponds to clicking on every link posted in the room. You should only do this if you trust everybody in your rooms.

On the other hand, if your computer is up-to-date and protected, the risk is limited. Again, it corresponds to clicking on links to random web sites.

As a registered user, you can choose to be identified across rooms by either:

• Email address. This is your registered, unchangeable email address. By default, only the Administrator in Virtual Rooms can see your email address. It is hidden for all other users, even Moderators, and it is always hidden in Quick Chats. (However, if you select a Chatzy ID and then explicitly choose this option afterwards, your mail address will be available to all registered users in rooms you enter later.)
• Chatzy ID. Choose your own unique Chatzy ID and nobody can see your email address anymore. Contrary to your email address, your Chatzy ID will be shown to everyone in the rooms you enter. If you are concerned about privacy, we recommend this option. Once you choose a Chatzy ID, it cannot be changed.
• Social media profile. If you have previously logged into Chatzy from Facebook, Google+, or any of the other third-parties we support, you can choose to show your social media profile. Be careful: your name and a link to your social media profile will be available to everyone who can see the Visitor List in your rooms. If you don't select this option, this information will never be shown.

If you are an unregistered user, your browser is automatically assigned a random 7-letter ID, e.g. "LAKIKOR" or "TOFYCYN". This helps other users recognize you across rooms and upon recurring visits. People still won't know who you are; they can just see that you are the same visitor that was in the room (or another room) yesterday.

If you access Chatzy from more than one device or browser, you will have several Browser ID's. You will also be given a new ID each time you clear your cookies. Because of this, we always show how old a Browser ID is. An old Browser ID is more indicative than one that was just set.

If you don't like this feature, you can disable it for your current browser. Chatzy will display "Incognito" instead. If you do so, the Browser ID's of all other visitors will be hidden for you also. Your choice is saved in a cookie, so if you clear cookies, the feature will come back.

Browser ID's are not used for registered users, since these are identified with their chosen ID instead. If you want to choose your own Chatzy ID, you should sign up now.

We like the idea of being free and we will continue to offer a free, ad-supported chat service. Our success, however, has brought about hosting costs which we are unable to meet without subscriptions.

We offer two different types of subscriptions:

• A Premium User subscription which applies to one user (you!) in all rooms you visit.
• A Premium Room subscription which gives all visitors in one room premium status.

We recommend the Premium User subscription if you use Chatzy a lot, but you don't administrate your own rooms. Premium Rooms, on the other hand, are intended for people that maintain one or several Virtual Rooms.

For more information, you may refer to this small comparison chart.

A Premium User subscription gives you:

• Unrestricted access. In free rooms, the number of non-subscribers is limited to 10. Premium Users, on the other hand, are always granted access (without taking up one of the 10 free spots).
• Private messages. As a Premium User, you can send and receive unlimited private messages to/from any visitor.
• No advertisement. A clean chat experience without banners or promotions.
• Faster updates. Messages appear slightly faster in all rooms you visit.
• No timeouts. You will never be asked to confirm that you are still following a room and you will not be logged out after one hour of inactivity.
• Unlimited lists. Your lists of personal rooms and room visitors will no longer be limited to 40 items (12 on Chatzy Mobile).

A subscription is only 2-3 dollars a month. Show me the options.

A Premium Room gives the best possible chat experience for all visitors:

• Unlimited number of visitors. In free rooms, the number of non-subscribers is limited to 10. In Premium Rooms, there is no limit to the number of people in the room.
• Private messages. If you allow it under Room Properties, visitors can send/receive unlimited private messages to you and/or other visitors.
• No advertisement. A clean chat without banners or promotions.
• Faster updates and no timeouts. Messages appear faster and you (the administrator) decides when/whether visitors should be sent away automatically.
• Complete chat history. All visitors can access the entire chat history (not just the last 10 KB). The administrator can even recall deleted contents.
• Custom room URL. The room administrator can choose a permanent room address like: chatzy.com/YourName.
• Hosting on your site. If you want, you can embed the room on your own website or blog in your own design and without Chatzy logos ("white-labeled"). Tell me more

In the future, we may add more premium features at no extra charge. We never make existing free features premium.

When you pay for a Premium Room or to become a Premium User, a recurring payment is automatically set up at PayPal. For instance, a quarterly subscription creates an automatic payment every three months. This way you don't have to worry about loosing your premium features.

You can change or cancel your subscription at any time before a renewal payment:

• To change your subscription, for instance from a monthly to a yearly subscription (which is cheaper), simply select the subscription period you want, click the "Change Subscription" button, and follow the instructions.
• Click here for information on how to cancel a subscription.

After you fill out our purchase form, you will be directed to a secure server at PayPal. PayPal, an eBay company, is one of the world's largest online payment processors.

All sensitive information is entered and encrypted at PayPal's secure server. Only PayPal will know your credit card details, they will not be available to Chatzy.

If you are not already registered with PayPal, you will have to choose a user name and a password at PayPal's site (as well as entering your credit card details). With this user name and password, you will be able to pay quickly and securely at services which use PayPal as their payment processor in the future.