On top of that, the contacts search wants to look in my device’s contacts (intentionally kept empty, and access denied anyway), so I don’t even know whether it is checking the server-side users database.
I contacted their support folks to ask whether it was also searching a server-based users database, but no one responded. I think I’m going to abandon #Wickr / #Wickr_Pro / #Wickr_Me permanently based on unanswered questions about the user database and inability to obtain responses from support.