APMSG — Source library
Public documentation snapshot: 2026-10-17
An inmate messaging app that family manages from outside
APMSG is a communication project for families supporting someone incarcerated. Review the family-managed phone workflow, language support and published packages.
An inmate messaging app that family manages from outside
A family-held phone line for someone inside, in English or Spanish, paid for and managed from outside.
An inmate messaging app that family manages from outside
Built for: A mother, partner, sister or friend who is the one putting money on the line so someone inside can call · Families where two or three people chip in for the same person and keep double-paying or both waiting · Spanish-speaking families who are handed English-only instructions and an English-only phone menu · Anyone who has lost a week of contact because the balance ran out and nobody knew
APMSG exists because of this.
He calls when he can. That is the whole channel. There is no screen on the inside, no app to install, no account for him to log into, so every conversation you have runs through a phone line and whatever money is sitting on it.
APMSG exists because of this.
When the money runs out it runs out mid-sentence, and you usually find out because he stops calling. The money is the second problem. You put in twenty dollars and get back a number of credits, and a credit is not a thing anyone can picture.
APMSG exists because of this.
Nobody can tell you whether 2,340 credits means four more messages or forty, so you either overpay to be safe or you guess wrong and he goes quiet for a week. If two or three of you are helping, none of you can see what the others did, so you all load the account on the same Friday or nobody does.
APMSG exists because of this.
Then the line gets shut off. It happens, and it is not your fault. The number he has been calling stops working, and now you are on a support queue explaining who you are while the messages you already paid for sit somewhere you cannot hear them.
APMSG exists because of this.
The instructions are in English and your mother reads Spanish. The app assumes a newer phone and unmetered data than you have. Every part of this assumes time you do not have and patience nobody should have to spend to hear a voice.
APMSG exists because of this.
Sold to the family, not to a facility. You hold the account, and the person inside never needs a screen, an app, or a login.
APMSG exists because of this.
Balances are shown as messages and calls remaining, and an automated check ties that figure to the same price list the phone system charges from.
APMSG exists because of this.
One person can be funded by several relatives at once, and none of them can see each other's account, balance, or identity.
APMSG exists because of this.
A shut-off number is permanently retired and can never be reissued to anyone, including by a fresh purchase.
APMSG exists because of this.
Consent is rechecked in the moment before delivery, not just when it was first given, and a blocked message costs nothing and says so on the call.
APMSG exists because of this.
Outbound numbers are validated before any charge, so a mistyped, emergency, premium-rate or unusable number never bills the family.
APMSG exists because of this.
Automatic top-up guard rails are rewritten to their built-in values on every save, so no customer and no app version can raise them.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
APMSG is being built with two sides, and only one of them needs a screen. On the inside there is a phone and nothing else. Each person gets a dedicated number of their own. Dialing that number is what identifies them; a private four-digit PIN is what proves it is them, and failed PIN entries are counted in a durable record rather than per call, so hanging up and redialing does not wipe the meter clean.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
If they reach the main line instead, they enter a DOC number followed by the PIN. Once they are in, a voice menu, English or Spanish chosen at the start of every call, lets them record a message of up to sixty seconds, hear the voicemail left for them, place a recorded call, change their PIN, or ask for help.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
No reading, no app, no screen. On the outside there is an app, on the web or on an Android phone, built to answer the one question you actually have: can he still reach me. Balances are stated as messages and calls remaining, never as raw credits, and the app flags the balance as low while there are still a handful of messages left.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
You add money, move it onto a specific person, listen to voicemail, read one combined timeline of purchases, top-ups and calls, and manage the line itself. Several verified accounts can fund the same person, and none of them can see another relative's account, balance or identity.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
Adding a person who is already registered requires their private PIN, because a DOC number is public record and that alone must never be enough to attach yourself to someone and start hearing their messages. Money moves in two steps on purpose. What you buy lands on your account, and you decide who to move it to.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
Automatic top-ups will do both, and they are deliberately hard to run away with: a wait between attempts, a cap per day, and a hard stop after repeated failures. Those three limits are fixed by the service and are reset to their built-in values on every save, so nothing a customer or an app can send will raise them.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
Every attempt is written down so "why was I charged" has an answer you can read. Nothing is designed to reach a phone that did not agree to receive it. A number has to reply YES before anything goes out, STOP takes that back, and consent is checked again in the moment before delivery rather than only when it was first requested.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
A blocked message costs nothing, and the phone menu says so out loud. Recorded messages carry a listening link that is short-lived and tied to your signed-in account rather than being a permanent address anyone could forward. What you can do today is narrower than all of the above, and the app says so on its own front page.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
Calling, message delivery and payments are coming soon. The family app's help and privacy pages are open to anyone today, and no card is charged until purchases open.
How APMSG works, start to finish.
Treat everything else here as built and tested rather than in service.
Everything in the current release.
Each of these is built and working today. Nothing on this list is a roadmap item.
Balances you can actually act on
A number of credits tells a family nothing. APMSG states every balance as messages and calls remaining, and always rounds down so it never promises a message the balance cannot cover. It also names three states rather than making you interpret a number: out, low (fewer than five messages left) and fine. An automated check asserts that the figure shown in the app and the figure the phone system charges come from the same price list, so the two cannot quietly drift apart.
A voice menu in English or Spanish
At the start of every call the person inside presses 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, and the entire menu follows in that language. Sending a message, hearing voicemail, placing a call, changing a PIN and asking for help are all spoken options. Nobody has to read a screen or navigate an app to use the service, and the Spanish is a full parallel script rather than a few translated labels.
Their own number is the identity, the PIN is the lock
Each person gets a dedicated line, and dialing it is how the system knows who is calling. Because any phone on the inside can dial that number, the number alone never signs anyone in; the private four-digit PIN does that. Wrong PINs are counted in a stored record against that person rather than within a single call, so redialing does not reset the count, and the line locks out after ten failures in an hour.
Record a message that reaches family as a link
The person inside records a message of up to sixty seconds after the tone. It is built to reach the family as a text carrying a listening link and as an email, so it does not depend on any one app being installed. The message also appears on that person's card in the family app alongside everything else.
Leave them a voicemail from the outside
A family member calls the main line, enters the person's DOC number, and records. The person inside hears it the next time they call in, from the voicemail option in the menu, and can move to the next message, save it or delete it from the keypad. It does not require them to catch you live on a call.
Recorded calls priced per call, not per anxious minute
Alongside recorded messages, the phone menu can place a recorded call, priced per call rather than per minute. A minimum balance is required before a call can start, so a call cannot begin and then die halfway through for lack of funds. Outbound numbers are validated before anything is charged: emergency and service codes such as 911 and 411, 900 premium-rate and 976 pay-per-call numbers are all refused, and a short or garbled number costs nothing.
When the line gets shut off, a trusted relative fixes it
Facilities shut these numbers down when they find them, so APMSG is designed to treat that as a normal event rather than a support crisis. A trusted family member requests a replacement from the person's card; a new line is provisioned first, preferring the same area code and falling back to any area code rather than none, before the old one is permanently retired. Replacement is free while the paid window is still running, the new number inherits the remaining days, and if provisioning fails the credits are put back.
A retired number is retired forever
Once a number has been shut down it is written to a permanent ledger and can never carry this service again. The available-number pool refuses it, and so does a fresh purchase, because released numbers get recycled back onto the market and one that was already burned would be dead on arrival for the next family. There is no path that quietly reissues one.
Several relatives, one person, no crossed wires
One account can fund many people and one person can be funded by several accounts, which is how families actually work. Everyone helping sees the supported person's balance, because that is the shared thing they are all topping up, but nobody can see another relative's account, their balance or their identity: the family-facing responses simply do not carry the list of who else is linked. Removing someone from your account removes them from yours only, and never touches another family's link or the person's own record.
Nobody gets a text who did not say yes
A phone number has to reply YES, Y, START or UNSTOP before any message is delivered to it, and STOP, STOPALL, CANCEL, END and QUIT all revoke that; HELP returns an explanation and the support address. Consent is stored as a real state, pending, granted or revoked, and then rechecked immediately before delivery rather than only at the moment it was requested. If consent is missing or withdrawn, no message is recorded, nothing is sent, and the phone menu says out loud that no credits were used.
Automatic top-ups with brakes that customers cannot loosen
Auto top-up is opt-in and works in two layers: first it moves credits you already bought onto the person, and only when your own account is empty does it charge a saved card. You can set the trigger point and the size of a top-up. You cannot touch the guard rails: a fifteen-minute wait between attempts, three attempts per day, and an automatic shut-off after three consecutive failures are rewritten to their built-in values every time settings are saved, whatever the app sends. Every attempt is written to a history you can read.
Short-lived listening links, and a published retention rule
The published rule is that voice recordings are deleted thirty days after they are made, covering the recorded audio itself and not only the record of it. Listening links handed to the family app are short-lived, five minutes by default, and are minted against your signed-in account rather than being permanent addresses that keep working for whoever receives a forward. If a record does not belong to you, the app reports it as not found rather than confirming it exists.
Receipts, refunds and honest handling of disputes
Every purchase records what it actually granted, frozen at the time of purchase, so a later refund reverses exactly that and never more. Reversal is tracked by a marker on the account rather than by transaction status, so a repeated notification from the payment provider cannot double-credit or double-reverse, and a process that dies halfway through finishes cleanly on retry. A product that has since left the price list is sent to a person to review rather than guessed at, because clawing back credits that were already spent is a judgment call, not arithmetic.
Built for the phone you already have
The web app is deliberately plain so it loads fast on older Android hardware and metered data, with a compact layout on a computer and thumb-reachable bottom navigation on a phone. A separate Android app keeps you signed in through a dropped connection and shows your last known balance, marked as offline, when it cannot reach the service.
Built for the phone you already have
Comfortable 44 and 48 pixel touch targets are set in the stylesheet. Two things are actually asserted by automated checks rather than left to good intentions: every family-facing page carries a keyboard skip link pointing at a focusable target, and the English and Spanish wording sets are compared key by key so a half-translated screen cannot ship.
Numbers we can stand behind.
Every figure below comes from the product's own release record or test suite, not from a marketing estimate.
Worth more together.
Products on this platform share one sign-in, one support queue, and one engineering standard. These pair naturally with APMSG.
Outside Access
Aimed at the same household: research, documents and straight answers for someone inside, arranged and paid for by a relative outside. It is a separate product with its own account and no connection to an APMSG line.
Recent progress.
This product ships often. The most recent verified changes, newest first.
Recent progress.
2026-08-17 built an immediate account-closure endpoint that scrubs sign-in and profile fields, stamps a tombstone and rejects the account's token on the very next request, verified by an integration test. It is deliberately not exposed by either shipped app yet, so account deletion remains an email request. The same day the last references to the retired database were removed from the repository's code, scripts and live-facing pages.
Recent progress.
2026-08-22 the Android app reached 0.5.2, which improved dark-mode readability, cut cold start to under 800 ms, kept the session alive through a dropped connection, cleared local state properly on sign-out, and blocked screenshots.
Recent progress.
Packages published in the app: $20 for 2,000 credits, $60 for 6,600 credits (10% more per dollar), $100 for 11,500 credits (15% more per dollar), and $14.99 for 90 days of line access. Credits are spent per action: 85 for a delivered message, 200 for a call, and 150 to assign a dedicated line for 30 days. Prices are held by the service and the real charge is verified against them before anything is granted. Purchases open at launch.
Can I use this today?
Not as a messaging service. The family app is reachable and you can read every page in English or Spanish, with live calling, message delivery, payments and credits enabled per account as each family is set up, so nothing is sent or charged before you ask for it. The app states this on its own front page rather than letting you find out after you have paid.
What will it cost, and what do I get for twenty dollars?
The published packages are $20 for 2,000 credits, $60 for 6,600, and $100 for 11,500, plus $14.99 for 90 days of line access. A delivered message costs 85 credits and a call costs 200, so the app translates whatever you buy into a plain count of messages and calls remaining instead of leaving you to do the math. Purchases are not enabled, so nothing is charged today.
We already pay for the messaging service the facility uses. Why add this?
This is not a replacement for the facility's own system and it does not connect to it. It is designed as a family-held line: you own the account, you see what is left in a number that means something, several relatives can help without stepping on each other, and if the line is shut off a trusted relative can replace it without a support queue. If the facility's service already covers everything you need, you do not need this.
How safe is our information? Who can see our messages?
Access is scoped to the account that signed in, resolved from your verified sign-in rather than from anything a request can claim to be. If a record is not yours the app reports it as not found instead of confirming it exists. PINs are stored one-way, are never shown back, and no part of the service reveals them, not even to support.
How safe is our information? Who can see our messages?
Listening links are short-lived and minted against your account rather than being permanent addresses. APMSG does not read or moderate message content; facilities run their own monitoring, and recordings are kept with sender and timestamp so records can be produced if asked for.
What happens to my credits and recordings if I stop paying?
There is no expiry mechanism for credits and no monthly fee that burns them, so credits you buy stay on the account to be moved and spent. The published rule for recordings is deletion 30 days after they are made.
How do I close my account or delete my data?
By email, from the address on your account, and it is handled within 30 days. Neither the web app nor the Android app has a button that closes your account instantly; the Android app's deletion control opens a pre-addressed email. It is also honest to say the purge is not fully automated yet: financial records may be kept up to 7 years and security, consent and delivery records up to 2 years, and the repository records the full data-purge path as still open work.
Does the person inside need a phone, an app, or an account?
No. That is the point of the design. They dial a number, enter a four-digit PIN, and everything else is a spoken menu in English or Spanish. There is no screen, no app to install, no password to remember, and nothing to read.
Can more than one of us pay for the same person?
Yes. One person can be funded by several verified accounts, which is how most families do it. You all see that person's balance, because that is the pot you are all topping up, but nobody sees another relative's account, balance or identity. Adding a person who is already registered requires their private PIN, because a DOC number is public record and cannot be enough on its own, and those attempts are limited to five an hour.
What if the number gets shut off?
It is designed as expected, not as your mistake. A trusted family member requests a replacement, a new line is set up first, preferring the same area code, and only then is the old one permanently retired so it can never be reissued to anyone. Replacement is free while the paid window is still running and the new line inherits the days you already paid for, with a cap of three replacements in any 30 days.
Can I look someone up by DOC number?
No. Looking someone up by DOC number is not available in APMSG.
What should I know before I rely on it?
We would rather you hear this from us than discover it later. As of 2026-09-02:
What should I know before I rely on it?
Live calling and message delivery are coming soon.
What should I know before I rely on it?
Purchases open at launch; no card is charged before then.
What should I know before I rely on it?
There is no self-service account closure in either shipped app. Both the web app and the Android app route account deletion to an email request, handled within 30 days. An immediate-closure endpoint exists in the service but no released interface calls it.
What should I know before I rely on it?
Account deletion is handled by request: a full deletion today is done by hand rather than by an automatic wipe.
What should I know before I rely on it?
Payment and transaction records may be kept up to 7 years, and security, consent, delivery and abuse-prevention records up to 2 years, so a deletion request is not literally everything.
What should I know before I rely on it?
Record lookup by DOC number is not available.
What should I know before I rely on it?
Retention, deletion, privacy, security and legal review are recorded as decisions that must be completed before live external delivery.
Keep them able to reach you.
Prefer email? contact@autosecurelogin.com
An inmate messaging app held by the family
APMSG is an inmate messaging app designed to be held and paid for by the family rather than a facility. It is designed for the relative outside who keeps a line open for someone incarcerated, whether a parent, partner, sibling or friend, often with others chipping in. The design means the person inside needs no screen or app: they dial their own dedicated number, enter a private PIN and use a spoken menu in English or Spanish to record a short message, hear voicemail or place a call.
An inmate messaging app held by the family
For relatives, the design centers on a web app and an Android mobile app that show the balance as messages and calls remaining instead of raw credits, let several relatives fund the same person without seeing each other's accounts, and let a trusted relative request a replacement line if the number is shut off.
An inmate messaging app held by the family
It is not the facility's own messaging system and does not connect to it.
Read the guide
How to Message an Inmate: Apps, Calls, Mail and Costs
Read the guide
A practical guide that uses public, official sources and explains where this product fits and where it does not.
Choosing an inmate messaging app: what to check first
If you are trying to stay in touch with an incarcerated loved one, the facility sets most of the rules. Each jail or prison decides which phone, message and video services it allows, who may be contacted and how communication is monitored. Read the facility's own rules before you pay anyone.
Choosing an inmate messaging app: what to check first
When you compare any inmate messaging app or phone service, ask:
Choosing an inmate messaging app: what to check first
Who holds the account? The facility, a company it contracts with, or your family.
Choosing an inmate messaging app: what to check first
How is the balance shown? In dollars, credits, minutes or messages, and can you tell what is left?
Choosing an inmate messaging app: what to check first
Can several relatives help? And can they see each other's details?
Choosing an inmate messaging app: what to check first
What happens to your money if the line or number stops working?
Choosing an inmate messaging app: what to check first
Which languages are offered, on the phone menu as well as in the app?
Choosing an inmate messaging app: what to check first
What is kept, and for how long? Ask about recordings and about closing your account.
What APMSG is, and is not
APMSG is designed as a family-held line, not the facility's own system, and it does not connect to that system. APMSG does not read or moderate message content; facilities run their own monitoring.
What APMSG is, and is not
The published rule is that voice recordings are deleted 30 days after they are made. Closing an account is an email request, handled within 30 days, and some payment and security records may be kept longer.
What APMSG is, and is not
If the facility's own service already covers what your family needs, you may not need APMSG.
Messaging credits and an inmate trust account are separate
Families often pay for two different things. Deposits to an inmate trust account cover commissary and other needs inside the facility. Phone and message credits pay for staying in touch.
Messaging credits and an inmate trust account are separate
APMSG covers only the second. It does not connect to facility systems, so it cannot take deposits to an inmate trust account. Use the facility’s approved deposit method for that.
Messaging credits and an inmate trust account are separate
Inside APMSG, a balance is shown as messages and calls remaining, rounded down, so it never promises a message it cannot cover. Several family members can fund the same person without seeing each other’s activity.