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A modern, faster, and more secure alternative to Privnote. Client-side encryption by default.
Privnote (privnote.com) launched in 2008 and is arguably the original name in burn-after-reading links. For a casual one-off note it works. The interesting comparison sits in the cryptographic stack underneath and the delivery flow on top — both moved forward since 2008, and PasteOnce was built on the newer baseline rather than retrofitted.
Historically, Privnote ships its symmetric encryption through the CryptoJS JavaScript bundle. CryptoJS is competent and widely audited, but it executes AES inside the JS interpreter, ships as a downloaded asset on every page load, and depends on its maintainers for IV-handling hygiene. PasteOnce instead invokes window.crypto.subtle directly with AES-256-GCM and a 12-byte IV — the W3C-standardized primitive baked into Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
The other meaningful difference is the channel. Privnote's signature feature is built-in email send — type a recipient address, Privnote mails the link, optional receipt callback. PasteOnce hands you only the URL and stops. Drop it into iMessage, Signal, a Jira ticket — whichever route you already use. We never see recipient addresses, never run an outbound mail relay, never fire receipts. That is a flexibility tradeoff, not a unilateral win.
Client-side encrypted. We can't see your data.
Your data is encrypted in your browser before it leaves your device.
Messages are automatically deleted after being read once.
We never see your data. Only encrypted blobs pass through our servers.
Links work exactly once. Refresh the page and it's gone forever.
Your sensitive data is encrypted in your browser using AES-256-GCM. The encryption key is generated randomly and never sent to our servers.
Only the encrypted blob is stored in our database, with an automatic expiration time. We literally cannot read your data.
When your recipient opens the link, the encrypted data is fetched and immediately deleted from our servers using an atomic Redis GETDEL. The key in the URL hash decrypts the message in their browser.
Both canonical sites are short, but homoglyph and hyphenated knockoffs exist. Open from a saved bookmark rather than a search result, tap the lock icon, and confirm the certificate Subject matches the brand you intended.
PasteOnce hands you a raw link; pair it with a route the reader already authenticates against. Signal between individuals, SSO chat between coworkers, a phone-dictated string for low-tech handoffs. Matching channel to reader is worth keeping.
Privnote offers windows up to 30 days; PasteOnce offers 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours, and 7 days. Smaller is better whenever the reader is reachable now. Every additional hour the ciphertext lingers is theoretical breach exposure.
Because PasteOnce omits read-receipts on principle, ask the reader to acknowledge through a second route. A thumbs-up reply, a short voice memo, a brief code word agreed beforehand. The genuine reader confirms; an impostor cannot match a familiar style.
A consultant has used Privnote weekly since 2014. They open both tabs side by side, paste the same secret, and notice PasteOnce returns the link without a full-page reload. Over a year of weekly use that compounds; for an annual user it is invisible.
Some shops treat 'a stranger emailed me a link' as phishing. Privnote's email-send option then becomes a friction point that gets flagged by the reader's mail filter. PasteOnce never mails anything, so the link rides whichever internal channel already passes their filter rules.
PasteOnce ships as a Next.js 16 statically rendered page with no popup, no cookie banner, no ad layer, so the mobile flow matches desktop. For a parent sending a Wi-Fi password from a phone, page weight and tap count come in lower.
For a typical short note both are solid, and the headline risks (lookalike domains, reader device hygiene, channel choice) apply to either. PasteOnce wins on cipher implementation — Web Crypto AES-256-GCM rather than a CryptoJS bundle — and on channel flexibility. Privnote wins on brand recognition and built-in email send.
Both keep the decryption key in the URL fragment after the # so it never reaches the server. PasteOnce uses the browser's native subtle.encrypt with a 12-byte IV; Privnote has historically used CryptoJS in JavaScript. The strength of AES-256-GCM is identical; the difference is who you trust to ship correct AES.
Native subtle.encrypt runs in compiled browser code with hardware AES instructions where the CPU supports them, timing-attack mitigations, and a separate security-update channel from the page. JS-library AES works correctly but ships over the wire on every visit, widening the supply-chain surface.
If your workflow is 'paste, copy link, send through my own channel,' PasteOnce drops in directly. If you depended on Privnote's outbound email or read-receipt feature you will need to substitute — usually by sending through the reader's preferred chat tool and asking for manual acknowledgement.