Privacy Policy for cl0q

Last updated: 17 July 2026

1. Introduction

cl0q (“we,” “us,” or “our”) operates cl0q.com (the “Service”), a free and fully open-source search engine with its own crawler and index. This policy describes exactly what we collect and what we do not. We have tried to write it so that every sentence is something you could verify, rather than something you have to take on trust.

The short version

No accounts. Searching requires no login, no key, and no identity — there is nothing to attach a search to.
No search history. We have no database of what anyone has searched for. None exists to be sold, leaked, or handed over.
No request logs. We keep no per-request access log — no IP address or query is written to disk when you search. Only application errors are logged, and they contain neither.
No cookies. cl0q sets no cookies at all — not for tracking, not for sessions, not for anything.
No third parties. The site loads zero external resources: no analytics, no tag managers, no ad pixels, no external fonts. View source and check.
No profiling, no ads. We do not build user profiles and do not serve personalised advertising.
Your query isn't leaked to sites you click. We send Referrer-Policy: no-referrer, so a site you click through to is told nothing about what you searched for, or that you came from cl0q.

2. What We Collect

Search queries

We process your search terms to generate results. Your query is held in memory for the life of that request and is never written to any database — cl0q has no search-history table, no query log table, and no analytics store.

Server logs

cl0q keeps no per-request access log. For a normal request — including every search — we write no IP address, no requested URL, no query string, and no user agent to disk. There is simply no per-request record kept.

The only thing we log is application errors and operational events: a failed database query, a slow query, the server starting or stopping. These entries carry no IP address and no search terms — a rejected query, for example, records only its length, never its content — and they rotate out within a few days. We do not record the referrer; we never asked your browser for it.

Cookies

cl0q sets no cookies. Not session cookies, not preference cookies, not tracking cookies. Nothing to disable, nothing to consent to.

3. Personal Information

We do not ask for your name, and there are no user accounts. There is exactly one place where you can choose to give us personal information, and it is optional:

What	When	How it's stored
Email address	Only if you supply one when requesting an API key. The field may be left blank, and the key works either way.	Stored in plain text as a label on the key record, used solely to contact you about that key. Leave it blank and no contact information is stored at all.
Email address (paid-plan waitlist)	Only if you ask to be notified about Pro or Enterprise on the API page. Entirely optional — it is not needed to use cl0q or to hold a free key.	Stored in plain text with the plan you asked about and, if you wrote one, your note about what you would build. Used only to email you when that plan launches, or to reply to you directly. No IP address is stored with it, and it is never used for any other mailing.

We do not collect precise geolocation. We do not buy, sell, rent, or share personal information with anyone.

4. Features That Necessarily Store Data

Two optional features store data because they cannot function otherwise. Neither is required to use cl0q, and neither is enabled unless you ask for it:

Saved-search alerts. If you subscribe to alerts for a search, we store that query and the browser push endpoint needed to notify you — that is the entire point of the feature. Removing the subscription removes the record. This is the one circumstance in which a search term of yours is stored, and it happens only because you explicitly asked us to watch it for you.
API keys. Keys are stored only as a SHA-256 hash. We cannot recover or show you your key after it is issued, and a key is never linked to the searches made with it.

5. How We Use Information

To deliver the Service — process your query and return results.
Reliability and security — uptime monitoring, debugging, and preventing abuse of a small shared service.
Nothing else. No profiling, no personalised advertising, no behavioural analysis, no sale or sharing of data.

6. Third-Party Services

There are none. Your query is handled entirely by our own software on our own infrastructure. The site loads no external scripts, stylesheets, fonts, images, or analytics of any kind — you can confirm this by viewing the page source or watching your browser's network panel.

7. Data Retention

Data	Retained for
Error / diagnostic logs (no IP address, no query — see §2)	Up to 7 days. Logs rotate daily and we keep 7 generations; older generations are deleted automatically. No per-request access log is kept.
Search queries in any database	Never stored. No such database exists.
Saved-search alert subscriptions	Until you remove the subscription.
API keys (hashed) and any email you supplied	Until the key is deactivated or you ask us to delete it.
Paid-plan waitlist entries (email, plan, optional note)	Until that plan launches and you have been notified, or you ask us to delete it — whichever comes first.

8. Security

HTTPS everywhere, with HSTS enforcing encrypted connections.
API keys are stored hashed (SHA-256), never in plain text.
Referrer-Policy: no-referrer and X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff are set on every response.
We apply security updates to both the operating system and the application.

9. Your Rights

Because we hold no account and no search history, there is usually nothing of yours for us to export or erase. Where we do hold something — an email you gave us with an API key, or a saved-search subscription — you can ask us to delete it at any time using the contact details below, and we will.

10. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from children. Since we do not collect personal information from searchers at all, this is largely moot in practice.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected in the “last updated” date above and highlighted on our homepage.

12. Contact Us

For any question or request about your data, contact @chrisknowshtml on X or email support@cl0q.com.