Search engines
Presearch privacy rating
Search engine from the Canadian company Presearch that serves queries through a network of community-run nodes and rewards searchers and node operators with its PRE crypto token.
Summary
Presearch scores 43 out of 100 (grade D) on the search engines criteria. It meets 2 of 10 criteria: no search history logs and no profile-based ads. It partly meets no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales, TLS configuration and no account needed. It does not meet open source, independent audit, transparency report and tells users about requests. It is based in Canada: Five Eyes member. Automated tests: SSL Labs grade B.
Score 43 out of 100. How scoring works
Criteria
- No
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Partial
No trackers or telemetry Weight 3 of 3
Are the website and apps free of third-party trackers, with any analytics anonymous and any telemetry off by default?
No third-party cookies are used, but first-party usage data such as clicked ads and links is collected.
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Partial
No ads or data sales Weight 2 of 3
Is the product funded without advertising, ad targeting or selling user data?
Funded by keyword ads bought by staking PRE tokens, shown based on the search terms; an ad-free subscription is available.
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No
Independent audit Weight 2 of 3
Has an independent security or privacy audit been published within the last three years?
No independent audit is published.
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No
Transparency report Weight 2 of 3
Does the provider regularly publish how many government and legal requests it receives and how it responds?
No transparency report or government request policy is published.
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No
Tells users about requests Weight 1 of 3
Does the provider promise to tell users about requests for their data, unless a court forbids it?
No published policy on notifying users about data requests.
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Yes
No search history logs Weight 3 of 3
Are searches stored without IP addresses or other identifiers?
Searches are not stored, and IP addresses and browser details are not passed to the nodes that fulfil queries.
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Yes
No profile-based ads Weight 2 of 3
Are ads (if any) based only on the current search, not a profile?
Ads are matched to the keywords of the current search.
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Partial
No account needed Weight 1 of 3
Can every feature be used without an account?
Search works without an account; token rewards and the ad-free subscription need a Presearch account.
Automated tests
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Partial
TLS configuration Weight 2 of 3
Does the website pass the Qualys SSL Labs test with a grade of A or better?
Grade B
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Not tested yet
Security headers Weight 1 of 3
Does the website pass the Mozilla HTTP Observatory test with a grade of A or better?
Not tested yet.
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Not tested yet
Modern web standards Weight 1 of 3
Does the website score 90% or higher on the Internet.nl website test?
Not tested yet.