Are Pastes on paste.centos.org Private or Public, and How Long Are They Kept?

Updated

Pastes on paste.centos.org are generally treated as public content: once you create a paste, it is reachable through its own URL, and anyone who has that link can open it. The site itself does not state a retention period, so there is no documented guarantee that a paste will expire after a set time. Because of that, avoid putting passwords, tokens, private keys, or other sensitive data into a paste.

What the site actually shows

The paste creation page is titled "Create a new paste" and offers fields for:

  • Author — an optional label for who wrote it
  • Title — a name for the paste
  • Language — a syntax highlighting choice from a long list (Plain Text, Bash, Python, SQL, C, Diff-output, and many others)
  • Content — the text itself

The page also links to API and About sections. What it does not show on the creation page is any visibility control (public/unlisted/private) or any expiration setting. That absence is the key fact: there is no documented option to make a paste private, and no documented time limit after which a paste is deleted.

Public vs. private: what you can conclude

Question What the evidence supports
Is a paste public? Yes — it is accessible via its unique URL once created
Can I mark a paste private? Not shown on the creation page; no visibility option is documented
Can I set an expiry time? Not shown; no retention period is stated
Is the URL secret? The URL is the only thing limiting access, so treat it as unlisted-at-best, not private

A useful way to think about it: an unlisted paste and a private paste are not the same thing. If a paste is only protected by an obscure URL, anyone who receives, guesses, or finds that link can read it. Since paste.centos.org does not document a private mode, you should assume a paste is readable by anyone with the link.

How long are pastes kept?

There is no published retention policy in the material available. That means:

  • You cannot rely on a paste disappearing after a day, a week, or a month.
  • You cannot rely on it staying forever, either — the site could remove content at any time.
  • The safe assumption is indefinite until removed, and plan accordingly.

If you need a paste to be temporary or access-controlled, paste.centos.org is not the right tool based on what it documents.

Practical guidance

Safe to paste:

  • Log excerpts with secrets stripped out
  • Configuration snippets with credentials removed
  • Error messages and stack traces
  • Code samples you are already sharing publicly

Not safe to paste:

  • API keys, passwords, or access tokens
  • SSH or TLS private keys
  • Customer or personal data
  • Internal hostnames, IPs, or architecture details you would not post publicly

If you must share something sensitive for troubleshooting, redact it first, or use a service that explicitly documents private pastes and expiration.

Quick checklist before you paste

  1. Does this text contain anything I would not want indexed or forwarded?
  2. Have I removed credentials, keys, and personal data?
  3. Am I comfortable with this being reachable by anyone who has the link, for an unknown length of time?

If any answer is "no" or "not sure," redact further or choose a different tool.