Acceptable use policy

Last updated September 17, 2026

Scratchpad is for your notes and the people you choose to share them with. This policy covers everything in Scratchpad: private notes, files, share links, pages published on scratchpad.to, the API and connected apps. It's part of our terms of service.

Content that isn't allowed

Don't store, share or publish:

• Child sexual abuse material, or anything that sexualizes minors. We close the account and report it to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and to police, as the law requires.
• Sexually explicit material, pornography, or offers of sexual services.
• Gambling: betting, casinos, lotteries, or promotions for them.
• Malware and phishing: harmful software, pages that imitate another company or collect passwords, scams and fraud.
• Other people's private information shared without their consent, or content that infringes someone's copyright, trademark or privacy.
• Harassment, threats and hate: content that threatens or harasses someone, promotes violence or terrorism, or attacks people for who they are.
• Illegal goods and services, such as drugs, weapons, counterfeit goods or stolen data.
• Spam: pages made to game search engines, link farms, or bulk messages nobody asked for.

Uses that aren't allowed

• Trying to get into other people's accounts or data, or testing, probing or breaking Scratchpad's security.
• Overloading the service: heavy automated traffic, scraping, or using Scratchpad as a general file host, video host or bulk transcription service.
• Sending invitations or share links to people as spam.
• Creating accounts to get around limits, a suspension or the one-trial rule, or reselling access to your account.
• Using the AI assistant to create anything this policy doesn't allow, or in a way the AI provider's own usage policy doesn't allow.

Your private notes

We don't read your private notes. We look at content only when it's published or shared, when someone reports it to us, when you ask us for help with it, or when the law requires. The text of a locked note is encrypted, and we can't see it at all.

Reporting a problem

If you find something on Scratchpad that breaks this policy, email hello@scratchpad.sh with "Report" in the subject, the link, and what's wrong. Please don't send us copies of illegal images. The link is enough.

What we do about it

Depending on what we find, we may remove content, unpublish a page, turn off share links, limit features, suspend or close the account, and report it to the authorities. We usually tell you what we did and why, except where the content is illegal or the law doesn't allow it.

Changes

We may update this policy as Scratchpad changes. The date at the top shows when it last changed.