Frequently asked questions
The short version of how shortText.com works.
What is shortText?
shortText.com is a tool for writers to paste short text and get a shareable URL. You write, click Create URL, and you get a clean link you can send to anyone. No account needed. The site has been around since 2006.
Do I need an account?
No. shortText is anonymous by default. You paste, you get a URL, you share it. There are no signups, no email verification, no profiles.
Can I edit a shortText after publishing?
Yes. When you create a shortText, you also get an edit URL with a secret code in it. Save that URL — it's the only way to edit later. Anyone with the edit URL can edit, so treat it like a credential.
How long does my shortText stay up?
By default, forever. You can set an expiry under Advanced — 1 hour, 1 day, 30 days, or never. You can also enable Delete-after-first-read, which removes the shortText the moment the first person opens it.
What's the difference between Public, Unlisted, and Private?
Public (default): indexable by search engines, available to AI training scrapers, anyone can find it. Unlisted: only people with the URL can read it; search engines and AI scrapers are told to skip it. Private: requires a password to read. The password is hashed server-side; we never see the plaintext. You set the password when you create the shortText.
Is my private shortText really private?
Your password is hashed with PBKDF2-SHA256 (120,000 iterations). We store only the hash, not the plaintext. To read a private shortText, the visitor must enter the password — we verify it server-side and set a 1-hour HMAC-signed cookie for that specific URL. The shortText body itself is stored unencrypted in our database, so a full database breach would expose the body. Don't put state secrets in a shortText. For most personal privacy needs, this is enough; for end-to-end encryption, use a tool designed for that.
How do I stop AI scrapers from training on my shortText?
Set the visibility to Unlisted or Private. Unlisted pages emit noindex, nofollow, noarchive, noai, and noimageai meta tags + X-Robots-Tag HTTP headers. Most major AI scrapers (Google-Extended, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) respect these. Private pages additionally require a password — most scrapers can't get past that.
How do I delete my shortText?
Open your edit URL and remove the content or set an expiry of 1 hour. To request takedown of someone else's shortText (for example because it violates rights you hold), email abuse@shortText.com with the URL.
Does it support Markdown?
Yes. Headings (#, ##), bold (**word**), italic (*word*), links ([text](url)), lists, code blocks (```), and blockquotes (>) all render. Single newlines are preserved as line breaks (writer-friendly), so you don't need double-spacing to break lines.
Is there a character limit?
30,000 characters per shortText. Enough for an essay; not enough for a novel.
How do you make money?
Ads on view pages, planned. Public shortTexts may show a single tasteful ad below the content. Unlisted and Private shortTexts never show ads. We're not running aggressive popups or auto-injecting ads into your text — it's one slot, clearly labeled.
How do I contact you?
Email abuse@shortText.com for takedown requests or security reports.