Question 1

What are the FAO and the cantonal Amtsblätter?

Accepted Answer

The Feuille d'Avis Officielle (FAO) of Geneva and the Amtsblätter of other Swiss cantons are the official gazettes published by cantonal authorities. They legally publish the acts that the law requires to be made public: bankruptcies, successions, planning notices, public procurement, commercial register changes, administrative decisions, etc. These publications are public by nature: their publication is a condition of the act's validity vis-à-vis third parties.

Question 2

How does Publicus read these publications?

Accepted Answer

Each official publication (Geneva FAO, Amtsblätter via the SECO amtsblattportal.ch platform) is analysed by a language model to identify the relevant entities: people, companies, addresses, UID/CHE numbers, parcels. A systematic verification layer rejects anything that cannot be matched verbatim in the official document, and Swiss-law-specific business rules validate every result (UID/CHE format, role consistency, cross-checking with structured data). When in doubt, we prefer to send nothing.

Question 3

Are you the official source?

Accepted Answer

No. Publicus is an independent indexing and notification service, not affiliated with cantonal authorities. The official source as defined by law remains fao.ge.ch and amtsblattportal.ch. Every alert links directly to the official publication so you can verify it yourself.

Question 4

Do I need to justify a purpose to use Publicus?

Accepted Answer

Official publications are public, but their systematic re-use (monitoring, profiling, aggregation) can fall under the Swiss Federal Data Protection Act (FADP). As a user, you must have a legitimate interest in monitoring names or identifiers: practice of a regulated profession (lawyer, notary, fiduciary, property manager), management of your own affairs, credit risk prevention, debt collection, compliance, or any other prevailing interest recognised by Swiss law. By signing up, you confirm you have such a purpose and take responsibility for the searches you run.

Question 5

How do you protect the privacy of the people mentioned?

Accepted Answer

Publicus applies the minimisation principle: we only index what is already officially published, we do not cross-reference publications with other sources, and we do not resell any data. Concretely: (1) every alert quotes the official publication verbatim and links to the legal source; (2) extracted data is never aggregated into a consolidated profile of a person; (3) any person mentioned can request the erasure of their name from our index via our dedicated form, regardless of whether the publication itself remains accessible on the official site; (4) our access is locked by IP and per account, and an audit log records sensitive searches; (5) we never disclose a publication outside the private workspace of the subscribed user who explicitly defined the matching keyword; (6) every publication is automatically archived after 5 years and is no longer accessible from the active database, in line with the FADP right-to-be-forgotten principle.

Question 6

What are your anti-error commitments?

Accepted Answer

No alert without an exact match in the official publication. No alert without a direct link to the legal source. Swiss identifiers (UID, CHE, parcels) validated against official formats. When in doubt, we send nothing rather than send something uncertain.

Swiss Official Gazettes,
parsed every day.
On your behalf.

Three steps, zero manual monitoring.

1. Keywords or categories

2. We read the gazettes

3. You get alerted

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Frequently asked questions

Swiss Official Gazettes,parsed every day.On your behalf.