No Tracking
We don't track your searches, clicks, location, or browsing behavior. No cookies for tracking. No fingerprinting. No surveillance capitalism.
Your Privacy is Sacred
At Argand, we believe what you search for is your business alone. No tracking, no profiling, no compromises. Ever.
Zero Data Collection
End-to-End Encryption
Max 1hr Data Retention
Our Unbreakable Promises
No Profiles
We never build user profiles. No shadow profiles. No advertising IDs. You're not a product—you're a person using a search engine.
No Logs Sold
Your search history is never sold to advertisers, data brokers, or anyone else. We don't even keep logs long enough to sell them.
Encrypted by Default
All connections use TLS 1.3. Search queries are encrypted in transit and never stored in plaintext. Your data is yours.
Ephemeral Storage
Any operational data we temporarily need is automatically purged within 1 hour. Maximum retention is 30 days for system logs—and those contain no search data.
Open Source
Our code is open for inspection. Don't trust us—verify. Every privacy claim can be validated by examining our source code.
How We Compare
Feature
Argand
Others
Search history tracking
User profiling
Targeted advertising
Data sold to third parties
Open source & auditable
Ephemeral data by design
Technical Implementation
For those who want to understand exactly how we protect your privacy at a technical level.
Transport Layer Security
All connections to Argand use TLS 1.3 with modern cipher suites. We enforce HSTS with a max-age of 1 year and include preloading.
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload
No Persistent Identifiers
We don't set tracking cookies, use localStorage for tracking, or employ any form of browser fingerprinting. Each search is independent.
Set-Cookie: (none - we don't use cookies for tracking) X-Frame-Options: DENY X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
DNS Privacy
We use Quad9 for DNS resolution—never Cloudflare or Google DNS. Quad9 is privacy-focused and doesn't log user data.
Automatic Data Purge
Operational data that must be temporarily stored (for rate limiting, abuse prevention) is automatically purged via TTL mechanisms in FoundationDB.
// Rust pseudocode for TTL enforcement data.set_ttl(Duration::from_secs(3600)); // 1 hour max // System logs: max 30 days, no search content
Your Search Journey
1
You Type a Query
Your browser sends an encrypted request to Argand
2
Query Processing
We process your search in memory—nothing written to disk
3
Results Returned
Search results sent back over encrypted connection
4
Data Forgotten
Your query is immediately discarded. No trace remains.
Don't Trust—Verify
Our entire codebase is open source. Every privacy claim we make can be verified by examining the code yourself.
git clone https://git.argand.org/nicweyand/argand.git
We welcome security researchers and privacy advocates to audit our code. Found something? Let us know.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Argand make money without selling data?
Argand is a passion project by Nic Weyand, not a venture-backed startup chasing profits. Our goal is to build the search engine we wish existed, not to monetize users. Future sustainability may come through voluntary donations, non-tracking contextual ads, or premium features—but never through selling your data.
Do you comply with government data requests?
We can't hand over what we don't have. Since we don't store search histories or user profiles, there's nothing to comply with. Even if compelled by legal process, we simply don't possess the data authorities might request.
What about IP addresses?
IP addresses are necessary for sending you results, but we don't log them. They exist only in memory during request processing and are discarded immediately after. We also support Tor and VPN users without penalty.
How can I verify your privacy claims?
Our code is fully open source on our Forgejo instance. You can examine every line to verify our privacy implementations. We encourage security researchers to audit our code and welcome responsible disclosure of any issues found.
What's different from DuckDuckGo or Brave Search?
While other privacy-focused search engines are commendable, Argand goes further: we're fully open source (not just privacy-respecting), we use no third-party tracking infrastructure, and our goal is finding exactly what you want on the first try—not showing you ads labeled as results.