Privacy
Checked against the code of v0.296.3.
What happens when you search
- This server asks the engines, not your browser. The engines see this server's address and your words, never you.
- Nothing on a results page reaches out from your browser. Site icons, thumbnails, previews and archive checks all go through this server's proxy. Badges (TLS, the site's CDN or country, trackers, terms of service, dead links) are computed here, cached, and shared.
- Your IP address is written nowhere that outlives the request: not in logs, not in the database, not in error reports.
- No account. Your settings are cookies in your browser. Server-side storage (profiles, bookmarks, research contexts, standing searches) exists only if you turn it on, is keyed by a hash of your cookie, is yours to download whole (Settings › My cookie › Your data) and to delete in one click.
- Research contexts and Highlight new results remember hashes, not pages. Seen links are stored hashed, so the server can't read where you went.
- AI features are off for visitors and disclosed. About lists what each one sends and to whom, and Settings switches each off; the instance owner can switch each off for everyone.
- Nothing here is sold, shared or personalised. There are no ads, no advertisers and no profile of you. Trending shows what people on this instance search, never who.
- Trending counts every search this server logs. It shows a search only once 3 different people made it the same day. People are told apart by a hash that can't be traced back to an address. The tag Trending uses changes for every different search and every day, so it can't link one person's searches together (saved server history is a separate thing, kept under a hash of your cookie). You can opt out in Settings (“Don't count my searches in Trending”), and Settings can also leave you out of the shared cache.
Compared with
- Google signs you in, keeps your search and browsing history, builds an advertising profile and personalises what you see. Your browser talks to Google directly with every query and click.
- DuckDuckGo does not profile you; its results come mostly from Bing under a contract, it shows ads keyed to your query, and it is one company you have to trust. 4got is run by someone you know, on a box you can inspect, from code you can read.
What you still have to trust
The person running this instance can read its logs and its database. That is the honest limit of any server you do not run yourself, which is why 4got is meant to be run by friends for friends, and why the source is open: the instance owner can be held to what this page says.