Privacy Policy
SearchLock is a search engine and browser extension that helps you protect your privacy when you search the web by disassociating your search history from your personal information. SearchLock is available for users of Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
The SearchLock browser extension uses a patent-pending process to detect when your browser is about to send your search query to a search engine which does not respect your privacy and re-routes it to SearchLock's privacy-enhanced search results page which keeps your privacy safe. You can read more about how SearchLock protects you here.
Please note: SearchLock serves web results for the whole web. As a result, you may see adult-oriented search results when the “Filter” feature is off.
Safari users should be aware that SearchLock is unable to prevent the logging of your keywords as you search the web due to the limitations in Safari's extension API. This may expose your search terms to your default search engine. However, you may turn off the logging of keywords by following these instructions. We also change the default search provider for Firefox to SearchLock.
Helpful Links:
Get Help by submitting a ticket at our help desk
Want to uninstall SearchLock? You can find easy uninstall instructions on this page.
SearchLock currently protects you from being tracked by intercepting searches at Google, Bing, MSN, MyWay, MyWebSearch, WOW and Ask search.
The SearchLock search engine and browser extension do not store, collect, or share any personally identifiable information. It is possible at times that we may unintentionally collect or receive personal identifiable information, for example, if you search for your name. If you believe that we have inadvertently collected your personal information, please notify us by email at support@searchlock.com.
SearchLock takes protecting the privacy of our users very seriously. This privacy policy outlines the limited and non-personal information the SearchLock Browser Extension and SearchLock.com (“SearchLock”) may gather, and our disclosure policy.
Unlike most search engines, SearchLock does not maintain user accounts, nor append additional information about you or your search history to any type of profile. This means that your searches are not logged in a way that could identify you or be traced back to you.
SearchLock takes the approach of not storing search queries together with any personal identifiers or personal information. In other words, we can't trace your searches back to you.
We do collect a limited amount of NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION to help us improve our service. This information is NOT tied to anything that could identify you personally. This information includes the following:
Basic details of your Web Browser (Type and Version)
Operating System
Where you initially heard about SearchLock (for example: Facebook)
Numerical count of searches, ad clicks, and result clicks performed daily
Search Terms (Logged without Personal Identifiers)
Date you installed SearchLock
Again, none of this information can be used to identify you in any way nor be tied back to you.
In order to fund the operational costs of SearchLock we display advertisements within our search results. SearchLock carefully selected our advertising partners to ensure that they comply with our privacy principles. In order to provide context-based advertisements, the search term you enter is passed to the advertising partners that power our sponsored search result ads. For advertising fraud-prevention purposes, our advertising partners also receive non-PII data such as the User-Agent string and IP address, however, like SearchLock, they take additional steps to ensure that the data received is not associated with personally identifiable information.
Furthermore, we have contractual agreements with our advertising partners which stipulate that they will not request and we will not share any personally identifiable information.
We also maintain affiliate relationships with merchants such as Amazon and eBay and e-commerce affiliate networks. These relationships enable SearchLock to earn commissions when you make purchases after clicking through to their sites. We do not share search terms or personally identifiable information with these merchants or e-commerce affiliate networks.
We define personally identifiable information as information that can be used on its own to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify you as an individual. While the SearchLock browser extension and search engine do not collect your IP or full user agent information, this information is collected by our advertising partners for the purposes of ensuring that the sponsored ads are relevant (i.e. to your country or browser type) and for preventing click fraud. To that end, our advertising partner takes additional steps so that data collected and used to customize interest-based advertising are not associated with personally identifiable information.
Cookies are small pieces of data that are sent and saved to your computer's hard drive when visiting sites. SearchLock sometimes uses one non-identifying settings cookie. This cookie is called “settings” and it saves the state of the adult content filter and any other search display settings. The other is from get.searchlock.com and it helps us determine where the users found out about us (i.e. An advertisement for SearchLock on Facebook). Neither of these cookies are associated with your search activity in any way.
We use local storage, such as HTML5 localstorage, to help us determine where the users found out about us. Various browsers may offer their own management of tools for removing HTML5.
We carefully selected our advertising partners to ensure they do not cause cookies to be dropped on SearchLock users and take additional steps so that data sent to these partners are not associated with you personally.
As a search engine and extension, and as an advertising publisher, we have various links on our site, including but not limited to search results and sponsored results. The SearchLock browser extension or search engine may also redirect your queries to DuckDuckGo.com or StartPage.com (other privacy-minded search providers) if the SearchLock service is offline or unavailable for any reason.
In regards to the personal information submitted to us during use of our help desk, we follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personally identifiable information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. Additionally, we promise to never associate this information with your search behavior or usage of our extension.
When you send comments, questions, suggestions, or feedback to SearchLock via email or help desk, and include an email address and/or contact information SearchLock may use this information to respond to you. SearchLock will not sell or disclose your contact information to any third parties. We may, however, occasionally send emails to community users with SearchLock company news. This service is opt-in and always includes the option to unsubscribe.
If you would like access to your personal information to correct, update, or delete it, please contact us by emailing support@searchlock.com or by mailing your request the contact information found below.
Even though SearchLock does not collect personally identifiable information during your use of the search engine and extension, SearchLock.com is for users age eighteen (18) and above due to the potential for adult-related links and/or content to appear in our results when the “Filter” feature is turned off.
We may amend this policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes in the way we use your personal information, we will notify you by posting a notification on our search results pages for your acceptance. Use of SearchLock after such an update and notification constitutes your acceptance of the modified policy.
If you would like to uninstall or disable the SearchLock browser extension, please follow the instructions outlined on this page: https://www.searchlock.com/pages/uninstall.
SearchLock is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Any request or demand from any government will be thoroughly checked by our attorneys, and we will not comply unless a law which applies to us would undeniably require us to do so. SearchLock is owned and operated by BeeStripe LLC, PO BOX 22986, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. The representative of this Privacy Policy is Ciaran Thompson, COO of BeeStripe LLC.
In the event BeeStripe goes through a business transition, such as being acquired by another company, a merger, or selling a portion of its assets, users' personal information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred.
Users have the right to access, rectify, transfer, and erase their personal information in our database. To access, rectify, transfer, or erase your personal information, please use our helpdesk.
6/25/2014: Added more details about our relationships with advertising partners, cookies, and a definition of PII.
7/1/2014: Updated cookie section. Changed privacy policy representative to reflect organizational changes.
9/23/2014: Moved and expanded information about data we collect into a new subsection called, “Data We Collect.” Added new explanations and emphasis around non-collection of personal information. Changed 3rd section's headline to more closely reflect content of the following paragraph.
11/10/2014: Modified first sentence to be more specific to the covered services: The SearchLock extension and search engine do not collect PII. Added “Information Collected During Use of Help Desk & Community Areas” section. Specified which privacy-minded search providers users will be redirected to in the event of an offline event. Changed age requirement to 18+ due the potential for adult-related links and content to appear in our search results. Added "How to Uninstall SearchLock" section for good measure. Changed to storing search settings in a non-identifiable cookie. Added information about this to the Cookies section.
11/21/2014: Added product overview section including helpful links and details about how the product works. Clarified which sites this privacy policy applies to. Updated how changes to privacy policy will be handled.
4/1/2015: Updated to reflect browser specific limitations
2/09/2016: Added distinction about the differences between the SearchLock search engine and browser extension. Clarified PII language.
3/14/2017: Clarified which certifications apply to SearchLock
5/25/2018: Removed Community Area. Specified the list of Non-Personal Information collected.
