How does RECAP handle sealed or restricted content?

We have been running RECAP for over a decade, and hear this question a lot. Lawyers with ECF access need to be certain the RECAP extension will not to upload sealed or restricted content.

We address this issue with a series of safeguards:

We encourage RECAP users to log in with PACER accounts, not ECF accounts, but we support both.

If you log in with a PACER account, you will not have any special access in the system. You will not be able to share or even access restricted records.
If you log in with an ECF account, the extension will detect that. If so, it will provide you with two buttons on every purchase screen, one for buying the document as usual and another to "RECAP" it (i.e. share it with the public).

This screenshot shows the regular download button plus anotehr to "RECAP" the document:

This way, when you are on a PACER receipt page, you can decide to buy the document with the regular button, or you can decide to RECAP it. Your choice.
Some documents display a warning saying that they are restricted. RECAP automatically detects this and does not upload such documents (even if they're no longer restricted, which happens sometimes):
On occasion, documents are not sealed in PACER even though they should be or somebody uploads something they shouldn't have. When this happens, we rapidly work with courts, parties, and users to clean things up.

In practice, the above safeguards have been effective for tens of thousands of users across many years.