How Privacy-Focused Search Engines Still Show Mugshots

July 24, 2025

Imagine searching your name and seeing a mugshot appear in the results—even on a platform that claims to protect your privacy. It happens more often than you might think. Despite promoting anonymous searches and minimal data collection, privacy-focused search engines can still display mugshots because they index publicly available content from across the web.

What Are Privacy-Focused Search Engines?

Privacy-focused search engines are designed to protect your personal data and online privacy. Unlike traditional search engines, they don’t track your search history, IP address, or clicks, and they don’t use your search queries to build user profiles or serve targeted ads. These engines aim to provide unbiased search results while maintaining user privacy by avoiding the collection of personal data and user tracking.

Popular examples of privacy-focused search engines include:

• DuckDuckGo
• Brave Search
• Startpage
• Qwant (a French search engine)

These platforms limit data collection and offer a private search experience that protects user data. However, privacy on the user side doesn’t mean censorship or filtering of content on the web.

Why Mugshots Still Appear in Private Search Results

Even though these search engines protect user privacy by not storing browsing history or search data, they still pull information from public sources—including mugshot websites and public arrest records. Since mugshots are already publicly available online, the search engine’s crawlers index this content just like any other public information.

These engines:

• Deliver uncensored, unbiased search results
• Index public websites such as arrest databases and government records
• Don’t typically offer content removal tools like Google does

Most privacy-focused search engines don’t filter or remove results unless legally required. So if your mugshot exists on a public site, it can still appear in search results—even when using a privacy-oriented search engine.

Where Do the Mugshots Come From?

Mugshots generally originate from public records and official sources, including:

• Local sheriff and police department websites that publish arrest records
• Online databases of arrest logs maintained by government agencies
• Third-party mugshot sites that scrape and republish these images, often monetizing them through search ads or subscriptions.

It’s important to understand that search engines don’t create or host this content. They simply index what’s already available on the internet. Therefore, even with privacy-focused search engines, mugshots remain accessible unless removed at the source.

What Makes Privacy-Focused Search Engines Different?

The key difference lies in how they treat your data:

• They don’t store personal search history or browsing data
• They don’t create user profiles or track users for targeted advertising
• They don’t log your IP address or device details

However, they still use crawlers to find and deliver search results from the internet. Their goal is to provide access to information while protecting user privacy by avoiding personal data collection and storage. This is why mugshots can still appear—these search engines don’t suppress public content unless they are legally obligated to do so.

Risks of Seeing Mugshots in Private Search Results

Seeing a mugshot associated with your name in any search engine can have significant negative consequences:

• Employment discrimination: Potential employers often Google applicants and may form biased opinions based on mugshots.
• Reputation damage: Friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances may search your name and encounter damaging images.
• Emotional stress: The presence of mugshots can cause humiliation, anxiety, and unfair judgment.

Even if your case was dismissed, expunged, or you were found innocent, the mugshot may still appear because most search engines don’t verify legal outcomes—they index available content regardless of context.

Can You Remove Mugshots from Privacy-Focused Search Engines?

Removing mugshots from privacy-focused search engines is possible, but can be challenging. This process primarily depends on the website hosting the image, rather than the search engine itself.

Here are the steps you can take:

1. Find the source: Identify the website(s) where the mugshot is published by checking the URL in the search results.
2. Request removal: Contact the site owner or administrator to ask for takedown. Some sites require proof of case dismissal, expungement, or other legal documentation.
3. Use legal options: Certain states like California, New York, Florida, and Texas have laws supporting the removal of mugshots from websites.
4. Submit a removal request to the search engine: Some privacy-focused search engines allow you to request the removal of specific URLs from their index.

If the source site removes the image, the search engine will usually drop it after re-indexing. However, this process can take time and may require persistence.

Alternatives If You Can’t Remove It

If removal isn’t successful, you can still take steps to manage your online presence and mitigate the impact:

• Push positive content: Create blogs, professional bios, social media profiles, and other positive content that can outrank the mugshot in search results.
• Use reputation management services: Professionals can help suppress negative content and improve your online image.
• Monitor regularly: Set up alerts for your name to stay informed about new content appearing online.

How Privacy-Focused Search Engines Protect User Data

While they do not control the content indexed, privacy-focused search engines excel at protecting your personal information by:

• Not storing user data or search history
• Using encryption to protect search queries and browsing data
• Avoiding personalized search ads or targeted advertising
• Operating with an independent index or anonymizing queries sent to mainstream search engines

For example, DuckDuckGo and Brave Search are privacy-oriented search engines that do not track users or store personal data, ensuring that your searches remain private. Qwant, a European search engine, complies with strict data protection regulations, such as GDPR, to further protect user data.

Final Thoughts

Privacy-focused search engines are valuable tools for maintaining user privacy and preventing the collection of personal data and user tracking. However, they do not control or censor the public content they index. Mugshots and other sensitive information can still appear in search results if they exist on public websites.

Understanding how these search engines work empowers you to take appropriate steps—whether that means requesting content removal, managing your online reputation, or utilizing legal options—to protect your online privacy and reputation.

By combining privacy-focused search engines with good online practices, such as using a private browser and being mindful of your digital footprint, you can better safeguard your personal information while still accessing the information you need.

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