Missing files, blank uploads, "commercial" uploaders, and AI

Hellooooooo~.

It's been almost 9 months since the last post, and I'm sure the first two items in the title don't inspire confidence, however the last two don't inspire confidence to me! And believe it or not, they're all (kind of) connected! Jumping into it:

Missing files

Some of you may have noticed some files missing that were uploaded between August 2025 and the end of October 2025. This is unfortunately due to a hold-over hard drive I had to put in due to explosive growth during that time, while I was trying to get another storage system online. That storage appears to have failed, however I do not currently know if it's the external container or the hard drive itself that is failed (the hard drive was new, so I'd be surprised if it was). If the hard drive itself has failed, I will attempt to get data recovery going for it. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Blank uploads

[Important] Catbox Needs Your Help

Heyooo. It hasn't been too long since the last blog post, but this one's going to be a lot more important... and quite a bit longer.

tl;dr - Patreon deleted my page, refused to elaborate, and Catbox is now short $1,300~ in reoccurring income to pay the bill. Support Catbox Here

What Happened

In the early morning of May 20th, I received two email notifications from Patreon and Ko-fi, informing me that both of my accounts were suspended for "material that falls outside the bounds of [their] Community Guidelines" and "a violation of [their]Terms Of Service or Content Guidelines", respectively.

Happy 10th Birthday Catbox!

I'm pretty bad at keeping to posting on Catbox's actual birthday (April 6th), however, fear not! I am here!

Once again I am not the best at posting about updates or changes, however there have been quite a few updates and upgrades in the last year! We moved cabinets again to higher voltage service (to support the massive amounts of hard drives needed). Catbox's primary server was upgraded to have way more processing power, as well as storage. Speaking of storage, here's the current breakdown!

Introducing Catbox Spaces! + Server Upgrades!

Hi there!

As we approach Catbox's 10th birthday (jeez I've been at this for a while.), I wanted to share something I've been working on in sort-of secret last year - Catbox Spaces!

Catbox Spaces

Catbox Spaces is a new, paid service I've been developing to help content creators share their content with their followers. It's designed to be a content publishing platform separated from social media sites and payment/subscription processors (as Catbox generally has a more… sensible Terms of Service/Acceptable Use Policy). A content creator who owns a Space can create content packs that can be viewed on the site, with measures taken to restrict downloading/hotlinking of the images. You can also create password protected content packs. This can be taken even further by tying your space in with your Patreon or SubscribeStar account to have access based on pledge tier. The Space is highly customizable too, letting you style it how you want. You can also see view statistics for not just your Space, but individual content packs too. Further planned features include automatic Glaze anti-AI protection, custom CSS (for those that want to get really in-depth with their customization), and more!

Note that the funding and expenses that I incur from this new endeavor is completely separate from Catbox's. Catbox will remain user funded, and user expense driven. Don't worry, I'm not going to become some big corpo. I've just seen what's been happening recently with sites like Imgur, Tumblr, and others heavily restricting NSFW content. I've even been seeing sporadic reports that Mega has been purging folders of NSFW content. That's one of the great things about Catbox Spaces - I'm not a corporation (well, technically Catbox LLC is, but it's just me!), plus, I actually care! Did you know I read about 4 abuse/content reports a day for Catbox? And I handle each one individually. Bet you Mega doesn't do that.

Happy 9th Birthday Catbox!!

Back at it again with another year!

I know there have been no blog posts or updates, but don't think that there's no development happening behind the scenes! We recently moved from our half-cabinet colocation into a full cabinet colocation! Also, we passed over 100 TB of hosted content! That's nearly double since August 2 years ago.

That being said, I wanted to thank everyone for not giving up on Catbox despite some setbacks regarding access. I won't lie, it's a little tough juggling a full time job and Catbox solo, but I make do! Here's to another year, and be on the lookout for more cool stuff on the horizon!

Also, here's 9 amazing pieces of art from 9 amazing artists!

Happy 8th Birthday Catbox!

Back at it again with another year!

I feel like I say it almost every year, but yes, the "development" of Catbox has been relatively stagnant. That isn't to say that the maintenance/advancement of it is as well. This year we upgraded one of the servers, as well as purchased a new SAN with an additional 50TB of storage, which should put us into a longer stability frame.

I've also looked at the results of the poll I put out a few months ago, and I'm very pleased with the results. Turns out a lot of people actually do like Catbox! Your suggestions were also very valuable, and I look forward to trying to implement some of them.

Finally, I'm looking into launching a new product sometime late this year that will help content creators and people alike with Catbox's goal of limitless filesharing. Stay tuned!

Financial Status

Update 8/17 - THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH. In just 8 days we've nearly reached the Patreon goal, and purchases of merchandise and cryptocurrency gifts have put us past the required funding for not just this month, but the next 3 months as well! The amount of generosity you guys have shown me has honestly touched my heart, and I am forever thankful. Catbox forever!

Heyoooo. It's been a while again.

tl;dr - Catbox needs additional funding. Keep reading.

This post is going to have a more somber attitude than posts in the past, and it's not one I've ever really wanted to make, but as Catbox has expanded, so has its costs. The operational costs for running Catbox per month for the last year have looked like this:

Happy 7th Birthday Catbox

Hi all,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted/made any news updates. Life’s been pretty busy for me, as I’ve been enjoying (read: dying) a full time job. Unfortunately this leaves me very little time to develop new features on Catbox.

None the less, Catbox remains. Thank you to all of my Patrons on Patreon for supporting Catbox despite this drought of development. There have been some background upgrades, including a firewall upgrade I did about 2 months ago, but nothing too interesting in the last 2 years :(

Thank you again to everyone who has supported Catbox throughout the years, whether that be through Patreon, stickers, or even just using it.

Comcast Xfinity blocking

Hi there.

It’s come to my attention that Comcast’s man-in-the-middle “Advanced Security” attack has been enabled by default for a large majority of their customers, and as such has blocked connections to files.catbox.moe.

You will need to disable their MITM attack by following the instructions here (obviously disable instead of enable): https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-xfinity-xfi-advanced-security 

Thanks,

-cats

Regarding the recent slowness/500 Errors

Hey there,

I just wanted to make a post about the recent errors some people may have been experiencing on Catbox when uploading a file. You may receive various errors, including a 504 Timeout, 500 Internal Server Error, or ID A:FF:FFFFFF. The root cause of these issues is primarily traffic and throughput.

What's been done recently

Catbox has moved inside it's datacenter to a half cabinet colocation. You may or may not have noticed the downtime, but the perks of this new location is it is has 10 Gbit/s fiber. The downside is that the current server for Catbox is only ethernet at 1 gbit/s. For perspective, here's what Catbox's average traffic graph looks like:

Happy 5th Birthday Catbox

Helloooo~.

First and foremost, wow I'm over 2 weeks late for the post. I'm actually pretty ashamed.

More importantly, the earth has completed another revolution around the sun, and Catbox grows another year older. This year was pretty sleepy. I know in the previous birthday post I abandoned the redesign, but that wasn't true. I've actually been working on it here and there. Unfortunately progress on it has been slow since I've lost interest in the general design of it (the hard parts are done really, it's just menial copying and formatting that's getting to me).

As some of you may have noticed, the server costs have increased. This is an unfortunate side affect of gaining popularity/traction as a file host. You just keep growing and growing - it's not like you can just dump stuff. Here are some current statistics as of April

TLS/SSL Updates

Updated Catbox’s encryption. Catbox now will only accept connections with TLS 1.2. Most users won’t notice a difference (besides your data being super more encrypted!). To see if you’re affected, check “Handshake Simulation” at the bottom of this webpage.

I have also enabled HSTS and OSCP Stapling. This means two things:

1. Catbox will now only accept connections via HTTPS. This was the case before, but I was doing nginx redirects. Now it’s done at a browser level.

2. OSCP stapling basically reduces the time it takes for your computer to make sure your connection to Catbox is legit, and makes the process of certificate verification more secure. If you want the finer details, you can read more here.

If you have any problems, be sure to send me an email and I’ll see if we can work out a solution. 

Two Factor Authentication

I added two factor authentication using TOTP. That means you can now secure your account with your favorite authenticator app, like Google Authenticator or Duo Mobile! Make sure you keep your secret provided at the time of activation, in case you lose the app or your phone.

Colocation - It’s finally happening!

After many months in development, hopefully it's worth the wait!

I've finally purchased all the necessary hardware and found myself a colocation company in LA with reasonable prices, and have sufficient support (from you guys!) to move forward with it. While the initial cost is high, I'm confident that this will put Catbox on the right path for long term stability. Since I feel like I didn't really explain what colocation is, check out this article about it. Basically, it frees me from being tied to X amount of disk space and X amount of processing power. Disk space being the big thing!

So, how much WILL the new cost be? Here's the breakdown of Catbox's newly projected monthly costs:

New Patreon Stretch Goals

A little explanation on my new stretch goals for Patreon:

Reaching $200 would offset both the current monthly cost of running Catbox ($100~), and allow me to purchase new server hardware, which I can then colocate at an Internap datacenter for $100/month, effectively matching my current costs, while giving me greater flexibility and power. I could roll Project Lain back a couple months, or maybe even fold it altogether.

God forbid I ever reach $400, but if we do, we'd be eclipsing even Mixtape. I really have no idea what I'd do at that point. I unfortunately don't have any new rewards for higher donation amounts yet, because I'm still trying to feel out my options. Bigger uploads? Custom sub-domains? Folders? idk man.

I also just want to thank my current patrons for their continued support, and for anyone considering becoming a patron, do it! Just a dollar from every active registered user would catapult us to new heights!

October 2017 Statistics

Yeah so I fucked up the awstats thing and i’m really not interested in fixing it (it’s so fucking old) so I’m just gonna give overall site statistics from now on until i find a better log analyzer software (taking recommendations).

*.catbox.moe

Late/postponed statistics

statistics will be a little late/non-existant for July, because of the server change.

June 2017 Statistics

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May 2017 Statistics

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Adpocalypse

edit: nevermind ads suck. 10% of front page views had ads. which means 90% of you blocked it. impressive tho

What people think I’m trying to do:

April 2017 Statistics

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March 2017 Statistics

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February 2017 Statistics

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Temporary block by my host

My host has temporarily decided to block port 443 (so https won’t work). I’m trying to get them to take it off right now. Until then the whole site will still work through http://catbox.moe/

Sorry.

Update 2/15/2017 1:40 PM

I’ll be writing a blog post later about this. The block should be removed shortly.

January 2017 Statistics

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December 2016 Statistics

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Project Lain

While accessing some older files, you might meet a black page with Lain on it before being redirected to your file. Don’t worry! It’s a part of my new space saving project hereafter called Project Lain. Skip to the last paragraph for a tl;dr

Currently, Catbox doesn’t cost that much to host. But if I were to keep growing at this exponential rate, it’d cost me more money. And I don’t like spending more money than I have to. So I’ve been looking into alternatives, and my decided solution is to offload files that haven’t been accessed for more than 5 months to AWS S3.

What does this mean exactly? What happens to your files when nobody has accessed them after 5 months? Not a lot really. Your file is moved from Catbox’s server to my AWS S3 instance, and a flag is set in my database that says “hey, this file doesn’t exist on the main server anymore”. If someone were to then access the file after it’s been moved, they’ll be greeted by the intermission page with Lain. During this time, the file is grabbed from my AWS S3 instance and put back on the main server. After a few seconds, the page will refresh to check if the file has been downloaded yet, and if not, will continue to show the intermission page (repeat). The file will then be kept on Catbox for another 5 months, provided nobody accesses it.

So, what does this mean for you, the end user? That really depends on if you’re registered. Currently, registered users’ files are excluded from the 5 month no access move policy.  That means that only anonymously uploaded files will be moved to S3. However, this does not impact the reliability of your files being hosted on Catbox. Anonymously uploaded files will still be served after 5 months of no access. They’re just on another server.

November 2016 Statistics

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October 2016 Statistics

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September 2016 Statistics

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Updates + Albums!

I swear I’ve been working!

A lot of the updates have been on the back-end: segregating my API so it’s more manageable, moving resources into folders where I can better edit them. But the biggest change I’ve been working on is albums!

Just like Imgur, but better because no ads and it’s moe. It took me about a month and a half of on and off writing to finish it to the point where I’d be happy deploying it, but even now there’s some smaller style points that I want to fine tune (if you saw Catbox in it’s infancy, you’d know styling isn’t my forte). I’m also looking for your input! If there’s anything you’d do differently, tell me about it. I’m (usually) pretty good at looking over criticism, and might even implement some of your ideas! Hit me up here

August 2016 Statistics

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Hi, So I want to download Fate Hollow Ataraxia from your website, And I was just wondering if all the downloads are fully legitimate.

All the torrents I have are just torrent files from Fuwanovel. I haven’t even touched them since I ripped them all (except for when I find new ones). I haven’t personally downloaded every VN though, so if you do find one that’s bad, hit me up at my contact page.

Upgrade again~

I gave Catbox another upgrade. We have around 270 GB of content! Minor downtime.

July 2016 Statistics

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June 2016 Statistics

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May 2016 Statistics

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Upgrade

Catbox received a minor upgrade (the cause of downtime from 11 PM -> 1 AM PST approx) today. Disk space was running short - almost 200 GB!

April 2016 Statistics

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What's your active user count?

There’s approximately 3,400 unique uploaders to Catbox.

Happy Birthday Catbox

Catbox officially turns 1 year old today. I registered the domain on the 5th, and the server on the 6th. Officially this didn’t start as a dedicated file hosting site, and was more of a personal project site, but I decided to keep it on the file hosting track to make it become what it is today.

Happy birthday Catbox.

March 2016 Statistics

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Turn out the lights on Catbox

I made a dark theme for Catbox. I wasn’t satisfied with the current theme, but didn’t want to force any changes. So now you can choose.

HTTPS enabled

I’m late on announcing it but I got a SSL Certificate from Let’s Encrypt. Soooo HTTPS is enabled on all Catbox related things now. Most things will get redirected to using the HTTPS version, but anything that uses direct links like to api.php will remain unchanged for now.

Server Migration

Well, after about 11 months now, Catbox has come a far way. 54~ thousand files, totaling to about 100 GB. I decided a while ago that once I hit the 100 GB mark that I would have to upgrade my plan, since I don’t think my host would let me get away with what I’m paying for my current level of usage.

What that means is the cost to run Catbox will increase by, well, a lot compared to what I was paying. But it’s not so much that I can’t pay on my own. I still won’t ask for donations, and I have no intentions of adding advertisements (like some people have advised me to). Donations would be a last ditch effort to try and save a burning ship, and at current levels Catbox can survive for a good while.

Anyway, Catbox will be down from approximately 12 PM to 1 AM (PST). I tried to pick a day and time when I had the lowest usage, but I’d still be awake to monitor the transfer. File uploading will be disabled during the whole process, while access to uploaded files will be temporarily interrupted. The planned positives to all this are: Increased dedicated power, SSL/HTTPs, increased flexibility with how I can handle the server, and (planned) Cloudflare  haha nope.

Update 3/5 1:30 AM: Well it’s not screaming anymore. Took a little bit longer than I expected but everything seems to be in working order. Mail server is still shitting the bed, so contact requests will be redirected until I unfuck it.

Update 3/5 7:20 PM: The mail server is working again. Email providers might detect it as spam for a while until I iron out all the formalities.

View page update

I implemented fancyBox on the view page. I think it looks nice. I also made it look a little better on mobile. I’m still not satisfied with how Catbox generally acts on mobile, but I don’t really have the drive to make a dedicated mobile subsite. To be honest I’m looking into redesigning the page as a whole, but I have terrible design skills.

February 2016 Statistics

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January 2016 Statistics

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December 2015 Statistics

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Duplicate Detection

In a (half hearted) effort to save space, I’ve added duplicate detection to Catbox. If you notice any bugs, be sure to report them. <3

November 2015 Statistics

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API + Chrome Extension

There’s now an API for Catbox. Currently it can only accept file uploads and can be used as a URL uploader. I’ve also released a Chrome extension that adds an “Upload to Catbox” button on the context menu of any image, video, or audio. Both of these are fairly new features, and are subject to change and limits, so be posted. All of these and the ShareX code have been consolidated onto the Tools page.

No JS Catbox + Shortener Changes

There’s a no Javascript front page for Catbox. I’m not sure why you’d subject yourself to the torture of having to use it, but it’s there for those so inclined. In this update I’ve also made PHP sessions persist across subdomains, so I’ve changed the QT to make use of that. In accordance, you should now send your userhash when making a GET request (i.e. ShareX), then the URL. Previously, shortened URLs had their owner designated by IP addresses (horrible, I know.).

Mobile Catbox

It’s still not the best, but I fixed a lot of it today. Things are actually tappable now. Because of the overall layout of the site, there’s not too much I can do about the file view page nor the links shortened view page without overhauling ALL of it (instead of just cleaning up/adding the CSS like I did today).

October 2015 Statistics + Other Stuff

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September 2015 Statistics

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