StartPage Protects Your Privacy!
StartPage, and its sister search engine Ixquick, are the only third-party certified search engines in the world that do not record your IP address or track your searches.
Your privacy is under attack!
Every time you use a regular search engine, your search data is recorded. Major search engines capture your IP address and usetracking cookies to make a record of your search terms, the time of your visit, and the links you choose – then they store that information in a giant database.
Tracking your searches can erode your privacy and lead to censorship.
In addition, those searches reveal a shocking amount of personal information about you, such as your interests, family circumstances, political leanings, medical conditions, and more. This information is modern-day gold for marketers, government officials, black-hat hackers and criminals – all of whom would love to get their hands on your private search data.
Why should you worry?
Major search engines have quietly amassed the largest database of personal information on individuals ever collected. Unfortunately, this data can all too easily fall into the wrong hands. Consider the following story:
In August 2006, the online world was jarred when AOL accidentally released three months’ worth of aggregated search data from 650,000 of its users, publishing all the details in an online database.
That database is still searchable. It is an absolute eye-opener to see the potential for privacy nightmares.
| » Enter a query and find who searched for it » Then click on a “User ID” to find what else this user searched for |
Shocked? You are not alone.
When we search, we share our most private thoughts with our computers. These private thoughts should be safe.
StartPage’s position
- You have a right to privacy.
- Your search data should never fall into the wrong hands.
- The only real solution is quickly deleting your data or not storing them to begin with.
- Since January 2009 we do not record our users’ IP addresses anymore.
- We were the first and only search engine to do so.
- Our initiative is receiving an overwhelmingly positive response