Terms of Use

Acceptance

These Terms of Use govern access to and use of pastebin.ca, including the website, CLI client, REST API, MCP server, and any other interfaces operated under the pastebin.ca name.

By using the service, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

Eligibility

The service is not directed at children under 13. By using the service, you confirm that you are 13 or older.

If you are under the age of majority in your jurisdiction, your parent or guardian must consent to your use of the service.

Accounts, sessions, and API keys

You can use the service anonymously or with an authenticated account. Accounts use passkeys (WebAuthn) or GitHub OAuth.

You are responsible for activity under your account, passkeys, sessions, and API keys. Keep credentials secure, do not share API keys publicly, and revoke access you no longer control.

The operator may revoke sessions or API keys at any time for abuse, suspected compromise, security reasons, or violation of these terms, and may suspend or terminate accounts at the operator's sole discretion.

Your content and the license you grant

You retain ownership of content you submit to the service.

You grant the operator a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to store, reproduce, transmit, display, format, cache, render, index internally, make available through supported representations (including raw, JSON/API, download, embed, and similar formats), moderate, and otherwise process your content only as needed to provide, secure, operate, improve, and enforce the service.

For encrypted pastes, this license applies to the encrypted ciphertext and associated metadata; the service does not receive the decryption key when client-side encryption is used. This license does not grant the operator the right to sell your content or to use it for unrelated commercial purposes.

Acceptable use

You must not use the service to create, share, store, distribute, or facilitate: child sexual abuse material or any sexual exploitation of minors; non-consensual intimate imagery; doxxing or targeted harassment; threats or incitement to violence; terrorist or violent-extremist operational material; phishing kits or credential-harvesting content; stolen credentials, tokens, session cookies, API keys, private keys, or credential dumps.

You must not use the service to host, stage, or distribute malware, ransomware, botnet material, loaders, droppers, exploit kits, or command-and-control material; you must not use pastebin.ca as a malware staging area, command-and-control channel, dead drop, or exfiltration store; you must not publish instructions or code whose primary purpose is unauthorized access, abuse, credential theft, or attacks against third parties.

You must not publish bulk personal data, leaked databases, private logs, or confidential records that you do not have the right to disclose; you must not publish copyright-infringing dumps where you lack the necessary rights; you must not use the service for spam, scams, SEO abuse, deceptive redirects, or mass unsolicited content.

You must not bypass or attempt to bypass rate limits, moderation, access controls, security controls, or abuse protections; you must not scrape, crawl, automate, or use the API in a way that disrupts the service or other users; you must not attack the service or third parties through the service.

Security research, defensive analysis, educational material, debugging snippets, and legitimate code — including code that touches on security topics — are allowed when they are not primarily intended to enable abuse, unauthorized access, credential theft, malware distribution, or harm. If you are unsure, contact abuse@pastebin.ca before publishing.

Your responsibility for content

You are responsible for the content you create, upload, share, or retrieve through the service, and for the consequences of publishing it under the visibility and encryption mode you select.

You represent that you have the rights and permissions needed to store and share your content, and that your use complies with Canadian law and applicable laws where you are located and where the content is directed.

Public and unlisted pastes may be read, copied, cached, archived, or redistributed by third parties. Do not publish content you cannot accept being copied.

Encrypted pastes

End-to-end and recipient-addressed encrypted pastes are stored as ciphertext. The operator cannot decrypt them and cannot generally inspect their contents.

Encryption does not make prohibited content allowed. The operator may still restrict, remove, or report encrypted pastes based on metadata, reports, reporter-provided plaintext or hashes, legal notices, or abuse indicators, and may share metadata with law enforcement where legally required.

You are responsible for keeping decryption keys, password phrases, and unlisted URLs safe and for sharing them only with intended recipients. Client-side encryption keys cannot be recovered by the service; if you lose them, the ciphertext is unrecoverable.

Moderation and enforcement

The operator may remove, restrict, expire, revoke, quarantine, rate-limit, block, or report content, accounts, or API keys at the operator's sole discretion, based on user reports, automated signals, legal notices, infrastructure abuse signals, metadata, or safety risk.

The operator is not obligated to host any paste and does not promise proactive or exhaustive review of content. The operator may preserve evidence of abuse where legally permitted.

Reports, removals, bans, and related decisions may be logged. See the abuse page for how to report content, request appeals, or submit copyright and law-enforcement notices.

No availability or retention guarantee

pastebin.ca is provided AS IS and AS AVAILABLE. The service may change, suspend, delete, expire, revoke, rate-limit, or discontinue pastes, accounts, APIs, or features at any time.

Do not use the service as your only copy, backup, source of truth, or durable archive. There is no SLA, no guaranteed uptime, and no guarantee of retention beyond stated TTLs.

Copyright notices

Copyright notices are handled under Canada's notice-and-notice regime. Notices must include the information required by section 41.25 of the Canadian Copyright Act, including identification of the complainant, identification of the work and the alleged infringement, the location data (URL) of the alleged infringement, and a statement of the date and time of the alleged infringement.

Notices that include settlement demands, payment demands, or demands for personal information may be rejected or ignored to the extent permitted by law. Canada's notice-and-notice process is not the same as the U.S. DMCA takedown process; the operator does not act as a takedown adjudicator under the notice-and-notice regime.

Regardless of any notice, the operator may remove or restrict access to allegedly infringing content at its discretion. Send copyright notices to abuse@pastebin.ca; see the abuse page for details.

Indemnification

You indemnify and hold the operator harmless from losses, claims, liabilities, costs, and expenses arising from your content, your use of the service, or your violation of these terms.

No warranty

The service is provided AS IS and AS AVAILABLE, without warranty of any kind. There is no SLA, no guarantee of availability, and no guarantee of retention beyond stated TTLs.

The operator disclaims warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, and uninterrupted operation to the maximum extent permitted by law.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the operator is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost data, profits, goodwill, or business interruption.

The operator's maximum aggregate liability for all claims relating to the service is CAD $50, reflecting the symbolic value of a free service.

Governing law and venue

These terms are governed by the laws of Alberta, Canada, and applicable federal laws of Canada. The courts of Alberta, Canada, are the venue for disputes. If a translated version of these terms conflicts with the English version, the English version controls unless applicable law requires otherwise.

Changes to these terms

The operator may change these terms. Material changes are posted with an effective date. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

Contact

Legal questions: legal@pastebin.ca. Privacy requests: privacy@pastebin.ca. Abuse, takedown, and copyright notices: abuse@pastebin.ca. See the abuse page for detailed reporting guidance.