How Gibbur works

Gibbur is a free random text chat: you press a button, you get a stranger, you talk. That’s the whole idea. But a lot happens in the second or two between “Chat now” and “You’re now chatting with a random stranger” — and we think you deserve to know exactly what that is. This page walks through how Gibbur works, step by step, and then pops the hood on the tech that keeps your conversations private and spam-free.

How Gibbur works, step by step

1. Agree to the rules (once)

Gibbur is for adults only. Before your first chat on the chat page, you tick one box: “I am 18 or older and agree to the Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.” It takes a second, but it matters — it’s the deal everyone on Gibbur has made with each other. Have a skim of the Community Guidelines and Terms if you haven’t already.

You don’t need an account. No email, no password, no profile photo. If you do want to save a display name or your favorite interests, you can create a free account later — but it’s entirely optional.

2. Add interests (optional)

Want to talk about something specific? Add up to 10 interest tags — think gaming, anime, music, philosophy, whatever you’re into. Gibbur will first look for someone who shares at least one of them. If nobody matching is around within a few seconds (about 6 by default), we fall back to a random stranger so you’re never left staring at a spinner.

When you and your partner do share interests, both of you see which ones — an instant icebreaker. More on this on the chat by interests page.

3. Get matched

Press Chat now and Gibbur finds you someone. You’ll see how many people are online, and as soon as a partner is found the chat opens. To them, you’re simply “Stranger.” They can’t see your name, email, IP address or account — and you can’t see theirs.

4. Chat

It’s one-on-one text chat, plain and simple. You’ll see a typing indicator when the other person is writing, and messages can be up to 1,000 characters long. Not sure how to open? We’ve collected some conversation starters that work better than “hi.”

5. Skip, stop or report

You’re always in control:

• New chat / Skip ends the current conversation and finds you someone new. Shortcut: press Esc twice.
• Stop ends the chat without looking for a new partner.
• Report flags the person to our moderators. Use it whenever someone breaks the rules — it’s quick and it genuinely helps.

Each browser tab is its own independent chat, so you can have more than one going at once. Two tabs in the same browser will never be matched with each other.

Start chatting

Under the hood

Random chat sites have a reputation for being a bit of a free-for-all — technically as well as socially. We built Gibbur to be boringly solid where it counts. Here’s what’s going on behind the scenes.

Signed, single-use tickets

When you open a chat, your browser asks our website for a ticket to join the chat service. That ticket is cryptographically signed, valid for just 60 seconds, and can be used exactly once. The chat server checks the signature before letting you in. This stops people from forging their way into the chat service, replaying old connections or impersonating someone else’s session.

Server-side pairing

Your browser never decides who you talk to — the server does. It runs the matching (interests first, then random), keeps track of who is paired with whom, and enforces rules like “don’t match two tabs from the same browser.” Because the browser has no say, there’s no way to pick a specific target or to send messages to someone you aren’t matched with.

Per-chat IDs

Every conversation gets its own unique chat ID, and every message is tagged with it. Messages are only ever delivered to your current matched partner, in your current chat. If you skip and a stray message from the previous person arrives a split second late, it’s dropped — it can never leak into your next conversation.

Encryption in transit

All traffic between your browser and Gibbur — pages, logins and the chat connection itself — is encrypted in transit with TLS (HTTPS and secure WebSockets). Someone on the same Wi‑Fi network, or anywhere along the route, can’t read or tamper with your messages on the way.

Rate limiting and anti-spam

Bots and spammers ruin random chat, so we make life hard for them:

• Per-user rate limits on sending messages, skipping and connecting.
• A 1,000-character limit per message.
• Duplicate-message flood detection — copy-paste spam gets cut off.
• Links are blocked in the first few seconds of a chat, a classic bot pattern.
• A cap on connections per IP address and per browser.

Most real people never notice any of this. If you do hit a limit, slow down for a moment and you’ll be back in business.

What we keep, and for how long

This is the part people ask about most, so here it is plainly:

The short in-memory window exists so moderators can review recent messages when enforcing the rules and so our systems can fight spam. Moderators can also view live conversations. The full details are in our Privacy Policy.

An honest note: not end-to-end encrypted

That’s a deliberate trade-off. With end-to-end encryption, nobody but the two people chatting could ever read a message — including our moderators. On a platform where you talk to complete strangers, that would make it impossible to act on reports, spot spam floods or protect people from abuse. We’d rather be upfront about it than slap a misleading “fully encrypted” badge on the homepage.

What this means for you: treat a Gibbur chat like a conversation with a stranger in a public place. Be yourself, have fun — and don’t share anything you wouldn’t want a stranger (or a moderator) to see. Our Safety Center has more practical tips.

How it works: FAQ