BurnPony — Burn After Reading

BurnPony — Burn After Reading

Privacy Done Honestly

• BurnPony allows you to send sensitive information that vanishes into thin air.

• By utilizing client-side encryption, we ensure that your secrets remain yours—even from us.

• No accounts, no tracking, and no apps required. Just write your note, set your terms, and share the link.

Technical Trust

• Client-Side Encryption: Your note is locked with AES-256-GCM before it ever leaves your device.

• Invisible Keys: The decryption key remains in the URL fragment (#), meaning it is never transmitted to our servers. We store only unreadable data.

• Zero Surveillance: We collect no names, no analytics, and no metadata.

• Proven Integrity: Every component is open source (Apache-2.0). You are invited to inspect our code, verify our protocol, or host your own server.

Your Terms, Your Control

• Customized Destruction: Limit access by view count (up to 100) or by an expiration timer (5 minutes to 30 days).

• Enhanced Security: Add an optional passphrase for an extra layer of defense, or use our QR code feature for seamless, offline in-person transfers.

• Smart Features: Utilize auto-hide timers, transparent read receipts, and private local labels to organize your communications.

Honest Limitations

• We believe in radical transparency.

• While our encryption is unbreakable, physical security is not: anyone with access to your link can read the note, and recipients can always capture the screen.

• BurnPony ensures your message disappears after the fact, but it cannot prevent a recipient from viewing it while it is open.

Take control of your digital footprint today

• BurnPony is part of a family of tools built on the principle that privacy should be verified, not promised.

FAQ

Q: How does client-side encryption protect my data before it reaches your servers?

A: When you write a note on BurnPony, your browser uses the AES-256-GCM encryption standard to lock your message before it ever travels across the internet. This means that by the time your data reaches our hardware, it is already an unreadable string of characters. We never have access to the original text, ensuring that your secrets remain strictly between you and your intended recipient.

Q: Why is it significant that the decryption key remains in the URL fragment?

A: In technical terms, the part of a web link following the "hashtag" symbol is known as the URL fragment, and it is never sent to the web server. BurnPony places the decryption key in this specific part of the link, meaning we store the encrypted data but never receive the key required to unlock it. This clever architectural choice ensures that even if our servers were compromised, your notes would remain safe because we simply do not possess the keys.

Q: Do I need to create an account or provide an email address to use BurnPony?

A: You do not need to provide any personal information, sign up for an account, or download an app to use our service. We are committed to a zero-surveillance policy, which means we do not collect names, track your activity, or gather any metadata about who you are or who you are communicating with. You can simply visit the site, create your note, and go about your day with total anonymity.

Version History

v1.4.0——14 Sep 2026

Encrypted, self-destructing private notes. Burn after reading. No app to open. Download the latest version of BurnPony — Burn After Reading to enjoy new features and updates immediately!

*1.4.0

BurnPony 1.4.0 adds a proxy. In Settings you can now route all traffic through Tor or a SOCKS5 proxy: Off, one-tap Orbot, or a custom host and port. Add a username and password to give BurnPony its own Tor circuit, separate from other apps. When a proxy is on but unreachable, requests fail instead of quietly falling back to a direct connection, so notes never leave Tor by accident.

*1.2.0

Pick your language, and read the legal documents without leaving the app.

- New: a language picker, nine languages, on the first walkthrough screen and in Settings

- The walkthrough is now translated in all of them

- Privacy Policy and Terms of Use are bundled and readable offline, linked from Settings

- The F-Droid build states its own facts: no push messaging, no Google libraries

*1.0.1

Minor bug fixes and improvements. Install or update to the newest version to check it out!