The Recoll index does not hold complete copies of the indexed documents (it almost does after version 1.24). But it does hold enough data to allow for an almost complete reconstruction. If confidential data is indexed, access to the database directory should be restricted.
Recoll will create the configuration directory with a mode of 0700 (access by owner only). As the index data directory is by default a sub-directory of the configuration directory, this should result in appropriate protection.
If you use another setup, you should think of the kind
of protection you need for your index, set the directory
and files access modes appropriately, and also maybe adjust
the umask
used during index updates.