Expiring pastes

Expiring pastes are pastes that will self-destruct at a set date and time.

Security

When an expiring paste reaches its expiration date, it will be deleted. First, it will be removed from the database, and then it will be removed from the disk. It is conceivable (but not likely) that the data could be recovered using a forensic tool, so if you are storing sensitive data, please consider using PGP or similar.

Precision

Expiration dates are handled by Sidekiq. When an expiring paste is created, a scheduled Sidekiq job is created to delete the paste at its expiration time. Note that Sidekiq's scheduled jobs are checked every five seconds (as of the writing of this article), so there may be a small delay before the paste is deleted.

Note also that, although second-based expiration dates are not able to be specified on the web UI in some browsers, the API allows second-specific expiration dates if necessary.