Privacy


Concerns

Some users may have concerns, using a distributed search engine:
  • May other people access my computer?
  • Does anybody see my local documents?
  • Does anybody see which web sites I have visited?
  • Which information sends this software to the Internet?
  • May I trust this Software?
We are very serious about the protection of your personal data and comply with the legal requirements.
The following description and theprivacy policy give you an overview, what data are collected for what purpose, and how we insure the protection of your personal data.

Facts

  • FAROO allows only access to the distributed web index. Access to other data or other ports is not provided. To prevent manipulation this access is encrypted.
  • Local files and data are neither accessible nor searchable for other users.
  • The content of visited web pages is searchable. But there is no information about who visited these web pages.
  • The index location of a visited web page is independent from the visiting user. Therefore nobody can find out, which pages a particular user has visited.

Desktop search

There is no access to local documents from outside, they are not stored into the distributed index, and they do not leave the computer at any time.
The desktop search can be disabled at anytime.

Advertising

FAROO uses a complete anonymized advertising system. The ad server does not know which peer was searching which keyword.

Web search

User searches and page visits are not tracked. The ip address of the visiting user is neither logged nor known at a single point. Because indexing and searching are done in an distributed manner and url, content and keywords are encrypted neither FAROO, any intermediate party, nor a single peer knows who was visiting what page nor which peer answered which query from which user.
While with traditional search engines your ISP, your system administrator and the search engine itself may track your search queries and the selected results, FAROO prevents this.

FAROO protects privacy much better than current search engines.

Indexation

Web pages which are accessible only via login or via HTTPS are not stored into the distributed index (e.g. webmail, online banking). The same applies to web pages, which are hosted at web servers with private IP addresses (e.g. Intranet).
The indexation can be disabled at anytime.
The Robots META tag allows Web site administrators to indicate which pages of the site should not be indexed by FAROO.

Ranking

The distributed ranking is done in an anonymized manner. The behavior of all users is aggregated. An inference to the behavior of a single user is not possible.

Personalization

FAROO personalizes automatically without registration, while fully protecting the user’s privacy.
No user profile or search history is stored at a central server. No personal information is transferred outside from his computer.
The personalization can be disabled at anytime.