Logging and privacy

Every request to the redirect service is logged, including the ones that fail. Logs are written after the response has gone out, so logging never slows a redirect down.

What is recorded

Request ID	A unique id for the request
IP address	The address the request came from
User agent	The browser or client string
Platform	Derived from the user agent
Referrer	The page you came from, when the browser sends one
Short name	The name that was requested
Destination	Where the request was sent, when it resolved
Full URL	The complete URL that was requested
Method	GET or HEAD
Result	What happened, such as redirected or not found
Timestamp	When it happened

Each link also carries a usage count, incremented on every successful redirect. That count is visible in the admin portal and is not exposed publicly: the public index returns titles and destinations, never popularity.

What this means if you are following a link

Opening a short link records your IP address, your browser’s user agent and, where your browser sends one, the page you came from. That is comparable to what any web server logs, but it is worth stating plainly because a redirect feels like nothing happened.

Failures are logged too. A mistyped name is recorded as a not-found result, so the logs show attempts as well as successes.

What this means if you are sharing a link

Two things worth understanding before you use a short link somewhere sensitive.

The referrer travels. If someone clicks a short link from a private page, the address of that page can be recorded in the referrer field. Where the page itself is confidential, that is a leak in an unexpected place.

Usage is measurable. A link’s usage count tells you how often it was followed, and the logs record when and from where. Anyone with admin access can see that. If you are sharing a link with one person, treat “was it opened” as visible information rather than private.

Where the logs live

In a Cloudflare D1 database, separate from the MySQL database holding the links themselves. Splitting them keeps the redirect path reading from one small table while the log grows without getting in the way.

Handling of this data falls under the Tophhie Cloud privacy policy.