Acceptable use policy

Last updated 25 October 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 suspend the account, keep what the law requires us to keep, 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 or a suspension, 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 stored encrypted, and we can't read it without its password.

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. On a published page, you can also use Report this page at the bottom.

What we do about it

Depending on what we find, we may take down a published page and the files on it, suspend the account (which also turns off its share links and published pages), close the account, and report it to the authorities. We usually write to 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.