Some things should be read and not kept. A burner note is a self-destructing note you share as a link: it is encrypted on your device, it can be limited to a single view, it can be given an expiry time, and once it is used there is nothing left on the server to find.
The usual channels keep everything. A password pasted into a chat is still there when the account is compromised three years later. An API key in an email sits in two inboxes, a backup, and a search index. The information stopped being useful the moment it was received, and it will outlive you anyway.
Disappearing-message features in chat apps address this by deleting the copy — from their server, on their terms, while their platform still processes the content. A burner note takes the opposite approach: the content is never readable by the service in the first place, and the useful lifetime of the link is set by the sender.
If the key travelled in the URL path or a query string, it would land in server logs, in a proxy, in an analytics tool, and in the browser history of anyone who clicked. Putting it after the # is a deliberate use of a browser rule that has existed for thirty years: fragments are read by the page and never sent over the network.
The trade-off is honest and worth stating: the link is the secret. Anyone who holds it can open the note until the view budget is spent, which is why the practical rule is to send the link through a channel you would trust with a one-time password.
The credential that should not sit in a chat history for the next five years.
A door code, a Wi-Fi password, a recovery code, a bank detail — anything whose value expires the moment it is used.
An unreleased plan, a piece of writing, a price, a set of notes that are not for a mailing list.
The first exchange is often the most sensitive, and it does not need to live in an inbox afterwards.
A screenshot, a photograph of the screen, a paste into another document — burner notes control how long the note is available, not what a determined reader does with it.
The link carries the key, so anyone who has the link can read the note until the view limit is reached. Send it over a channel you would trust with the note itself, and prefer a channel without link previews — a preview bot could consume the view.
There is no copy on the server to recover, by design. Keep the original note in your vault if you may need it again.
Burner notes are part of Scrinium Pro ($5/mo), alongside encrypted attachments, version history, graph view, templates, and the Dead Man’s Switch. The free tier stays unlimited for notes and sync.
A note that is designed to be read once and then destroyed. Scrinium’s burner notes are end-to-end encrypted, limited to a set number of views, and expire after a set time — after which every request for them returns a plain 404.
The note is encrypted on your device with a fresh 256-bit key, and that key is placed in the URL fragment of the link — the part after the #, which browsers never send to a server. The server holds ciphertext and the policy (views, expiry) and has no way to open it.
Yes. The sender can delete a burner note at any time, and it becomes unreachable immediately. Expired, exhausted, and deleted notes all return the same 404, so a request cannot be used to work out whether a note ever existed.
The mechanism is the same category — one-time, expiring links with the key in the fragment. The difference is where it lives: in Scrinium it is part of the encrypted notebook you already write in, so you can draft a note privately, decide to send it, and keep everything in one place. A standalone tool is the lighter option when you only need the link and no account.
No. Chat and email keep a copy on a server and usually keep it indefinitely, and the platform can read it. A burner note is ciphertext with a view budget, and both the copy and the key are under your control.
Burner notes are part of Pro. Create a vault free, then upgrade when you need one.