Are you a law enforcement officer conducting an investigation that may involve user content hosted on Pastebin? Or maybe you're a privacy-conscious person who would like to know what information we share with law enforcement and under what circumstances. Either way, you're on the right page.

In these guidelines, we provide a little background about what Pastebin is, the types of data we have, and the conditions under which we will disclose private user information to law enforcement personnel. Before we get into the details, however, here are a few important details you may want to know:

  ▶ We will notify affected users about any requests for their account information, unless prohibited from doing so by law or court order.
  ▶ We will not disclose location-tracking data, such as IP address logs, without a valid court order or search warrant.
  ▶ We will not disclose any private user content, including the contents of private pastes, without a valid search warrant.

Public account data
There is a variety of information publicly available on Pastebin about users and their pastes. User profiles can be found at a URL such as https://pastebin.com/u/username. User profiles display information about when the user created their account as well their public activity on Pastebin.com and social interactions. Public user profiles can also include additional information that a user may have chosen to share publicly. All user public profiles display:

  ▶ Username

Optionally, a user may also choose to share the following information publicly:

  ▶ An avatar
  ▶ Their location
  ▶ Their personal web page

Private account data
Pastebin also collects and maintains certain private information about users as outlined in our Privacy Policy. This may include:

  ▶ Private email addresses
  ▶ Security access logs

Public paste data
Pastebin is home to millions of public pastes. You can browse public pastes in our archive. Pastes can include:

  ▶ The paste content itself
  ▶ Previous versions of the paste
  ▶ Username of the paste creator
  ▶ Logs of paste visits

Private paste data
Pastebin collects and maintains the same type of data for private pastes that can be seen for public pastes, except only the pastes owner can access private paste data.

It is our policy to notify users about any pending requests from law enforcement authorities regarding their accounts or pastes, unless we are prohibited by law or court order from doing so, or in rare, exigent circumstances. Before disclosing user information, and subject to any legal restrictions, we will make a reasonable effort to notify any affected account owner(s) by sending a message to their verified email address providing them with a copy of the subpoena, court order or warrant so that they can have an opportunity to challenge the legal process if they wish.

We will take steps to preserve account records for up to 90 days upon formal request from U.S.authorized law enforcement authorities in connection with official criminal investigations, and pending the issuance of a court order or other process.

You may send all requests to admin@pastebin.com

Please make your requests as specific and narrow as possible, including the following information:

  ▶ Full information about authority issuing the request for information
  ▶ The name and badge/ID of the responsible agent
  ▶ An official email address and contact phone number
  ▶ The user, paste name/url(s) of interest
  ▶ The URLs of any pages of interest
  ▶ The description of the types of records you need
Please allow at least two weeks for us to be able to look into your request.