Questions & Answers.
Everything you need to know about Sharelinknow: ticket lifecycles, security mechanics, usage thresholds, and our zero-account privacy model.
What is Sharelinknow?
Sharelinknow is an ephemeral content hand-off utility. It allows you to bundle web links, formatted code snippets, and text notes into a single ticket, protected by an anonymous six-character pickup code. Once the ticket reaches its expiration deadline, its payload is permanently deleted from database storage.
Do I need an account or sign-up to share or retrieve content?
No. There are no user accounts, no registrations, no passwords to create, and no social logins for public users. Anyone can compose a slip or pick up a ticket using just the six-character code.
How many people can retrieve the same ticket?
Anyone holding the six-character pickup code (and password, if configured) can view the ticket until its expiration timestamp. A read counter is displayed on each ticket to track how many times it has been accessed.
Can I recover a lost or forgotten pickup code?
No. Because Sharelinknow deliberately stores no user identities, emails, or account profiles, there is no technical mechanism to search or recover lost pickup codes. Be sure to copy your link, print your slip, or download the ticket data (.txt or .json) immediately upon creation.
What items can I include in a ticket?
A ticket can contain up to 40 distinct items across three types: (1) Web links with optional labels, (2) Code snippets with language syntax indicators, and (3) Plain text or markdown notes. The maximum total payload size per ticket is 256 KB.
What expiration durations are supported?
You can choose from four predefined expiration durations: 1 hour, 24 hours (1 day), 7 days, or 30 days. Once the chosen expiration timestamp passes, the ticket is removed and retrieval endpoints return an explicit 410 Gone status.
What are the platform rate limits?
To prevent automated scraping and abuse while keeping the service free, ticket creation is limited to 12 tickets per hour per IP address. Retrieval is limited to 40 requests per minute, and password unlock attempts are restricted to 8 attempts per 10 minutes per ticket.
How does password protection work?
When you set an optional password during composition, it is hashed using scrypt (N=16384, r=8, p=1) with a cryptographically random 16-byte salt before saving. When a recipient opens the ticket, the server returns only metadata. The content items are released only after the correct password is submitted and verified via constant-time comparison.
Can I delete or 'burn' a ticket before it expires?
Yes, any ticket protected with a password can be burned early by opening the ticket and clicking the 'Burn' action. Burning immediately empties the payload from MySQL, permanently destroying the content for all code holders.
Why can only password-protected tickets be burned early?
Because there are no user accounts, the ticket password serves as the sole cryptographic proof of authorship. If unprotected tickets could be burned, any recipient holding the public six-character code could maliciously destroy the ticket before other intended recipients view it.
What content is prohibited on Sharelinknow?
Sharelinknow strictly prohibits unlawful material, malware, ransomware, phishing campaigns, credential harvesting, copyright infringement, spam distribution, and harassment. Tickets violating these standards are subject to immediate administrative termination.
What is Field Notes and how does it relate to the service?
Field Notes is Sharelinknow's engineering and architectural blog. We publish technical deep dives on minimalist web development, stateless HMAC session architectures, database indexing, and building privacy-first tools. You can explore our published articles under the /blog route.