"Promise" generally means a statement about someone's future behaviour; they're lying (or theoretically not) about something they already did (write the softwar

"Promise" generally means a statement about someone's future behaviour; they're lying (or theoretically not) about something they already did (write the software in such a way that they are literally incapable of retrieving the plaintext of messages). If I say I'm not going to steal and eat your cookies, that's a promise, which I might reneg on or never have intended to keep in the first place, but ultimately it depends on future events; if I say I didn't eat your cookies, that's a statement of fact, true or false. Edit: Er, obviously you should never trust tech companies about anything, promise or otherwise; I was making a distinction about what kind of deceit they were engaging in.