▸ Transparency Report

Quad9 considers privacy to be a primary goal of the organization. We store no information about end users in the platform, for there are no individual “accounts” that correlate a person or organization via any means (including by IP address) to resolver queries made to our systems on their behalf. Quad9 does not maintain a user database and has no knowledge of the identities or origins of any of the users of the system. Access to our service is free and without contract or sign-up process, so there is no means for Quad9 to associate DNS queries with any person or entity. This strict non-storage of information is a fundamental assumption and design goal of all of our systems and software. Even with such stated policy and models, there may be instances where law enforcement agencies request information from Quad9 in an attempt to correlate activities on the system with a user, organization, IP address, or other key value. The following paragraphs describe the circumstances and conditions under which Quad9 would reply to such requests.

Jurisdiction

Quad9 falls under the jurisdiction of Swiss regulatory law and criminal code and will comply only with requests for information that have been presented and approved by Swiss authorities. Quad9 is prohibited from complying with requests made by foreign agencies that have not been approved by Swiss authorities (article 271, Swiss Criminal Code.) Therefore, Quad9 will comply only with orders that either 1) originate from Swiss authorities, or 2) are requests from non-Swiss entities that have been validated and approved through an international legal assistance procedure, have been determined to be in compliance with Swiss law, and have been presented to Quad9 by Swiss authorities after completion of that process.

Quad9 does not store any personal information about transactions and, for clarity, has obtained a confirmation of exception from any such requirements under Swiss law. Quad9 is not required to store metadata about users or their requests and is specifically not considered a Provider of Derived Communications Services (PDCS) under the Swiss Federal Act on the Surveillance of Post and Telecommunications (SPTA; SR 780.1). Nor is Quad9 considered a Telecommunications Service Provider (TSP) as defined by Article 3 section b TCA. The Swiss Post and Telecommunications Surveillance Service (PTSS) provides this summary statement: “In conclusion, we confirm that Quad9 is not subject to the SPTA in providing its DNS resolver service and therefore is not required to fulfill any obligations under the SPTA and its implementing ordinances.”

Process

Quad9 may receive requests for information about transactions of specific users of the system by law enforcement, despite Quad9’s lack of ability to respond. In the case of receiving a judicial order, we are obligated to reply and provide any information we do have pertaining to the request that has been validated and presented by Swiss authorities. All inquiries are reviewed by our legal and management staff. We will provide information only when ordered to do so by Swiss authorities. Because Quad9 stores no information that can correlate DNS queries to a specific user or IP address, there is no obvious value of such requests to Quad9 and no records kept by Quad9 that would be substantive in an investigation of the behavior of any specific user.

Advice for Law Enforcement

We advise law enforcement agencies to communicate with Quad9 via our support channels before attempting to obtain information about a specific user. We may be able to clarify how it is both possible and mandatory that our system does not store any information about end users. This clarification may save the agency considerable time and effort in a legal process that we would expect to be inconclusive and unhelpful in any investigation.

Please see our Privacy Policy for an explanation of what data Quad9 does store about queries. No IP address information or any user-specific data is kept.

Quad9 will publish summaries about any requests for information it receives from authorized law enforcement or judicial bodies.

Request History and Summaries

2023 Q1	Leipzig District Court Decision File number: 05 O 807/22
2022	No requests for data
2021	No requests for data
2020	No requests for data
2019	No requests for data
2018	No requests for data
2017	No requests for data

Updated quarterly.