[liberationtech] World's Most Private Search Engine?

[LilBambi]

I have used ixquick.com and startpage.com (both from the same folks) for years.

More info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixquick

"Ixquick is a metasearch engine based in New York and the
Netherlands.[2] Founded by David Bodnick in 1998, Ixquick is owned by
Dutch company, Surfboard Holding BV, which acquired the internet
company in 2000.[3]"

"On July 7, 2009 Ixquick launched Startpage.com to offer a new service
at a URL that is both easier to remember and spell. Startpage.com
fetches its results straight from the Google search engine without
saving the users' IP addresses or giving any personal user information
to Google's servers."

I had been using ixquick.com for quite a while when StartPage.com came
out and was being promoted by Spy Chips author Katherine Albrecht and
CASPIAN advocate.

Startpage.com info on how it protects you:
https://startpage.com/eng/prism-program-exposed.html

Here's the content of that page:

--snip--

No PRISM. No Surveillance. No Government Back Doors. You Have our Word on it.

Giant US government Internet spying scandal revealed

The Washington Post and The Guardian have revealed a US government
mass Internet surveillance program code-named "PRISM". They report
that the NSA and the FBI have been tapping directly into the servers
of nine US service providers, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google,
Apple, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and Skype, and began this surveillance
program at least seven years ago. (clarifying slides)

These revelations are shaking up an international debate.

StartPage has always been very outspoken when it comes to protecting
people's Privacy and civil liberties. So it won't surprise you that we
are a strong opponent of overreaching, unaccountable spy programs like
PRISM. In the past, even government surveillance programs that were
begun with good intentions have become tools for abuse, for example
tracking civil rights and anti-war protesters.

Programs like PRISM undermine our Privacy, disrupt faith in
governments, and are a danger to the free Internet.

StartPage and its sister search engine Ixquick have in their 14-year
history never provided a single byte of user data to the US
government, or any other government or agency. Not under PRISM, nor
under any other program in the US, nor under any program anywhere in
the world.

Here's how we are different:

StartPage does not store any user data. We make this perfectly clear
to everyone, including any governmental agencies. We do not record the
IP addresses of our users and we don't use tracking cookies, so there
is literally no data about you on our servers to access. Since we
don't even know who our customers are, we can't share anything with
Big Brother. In fact, we've never gotten even a single request from a
governmental authority to supply user data in the fourteen years we've
been in business.

StartPage uses encryption (HTTPS) by default. Encryption prevents
snooping. Your searches are encrypted, so others can't "tap" the
Internet connection to snoop what you're searching for. This
combination of not storing data together with using strong encryption
for the connections is key in protecting your Privacy.

Our company is based in The Netherlands, Europe. US jurisdiction does
not apply to us, at least not directly. Any request or demand from ANY
government (including the US) to deliver user data, will be thoroughly
checked by our lawyers, and we will not comply unless the law which
actually applies to us would undeniably require it from us. And even
in that hypothetical situation, we refer to our first point; we don't
even have any user data to give. We will never cooperate with
voluntary spying programs like PRISM.

StartPage cannot be forced to start spying. Given the strong
protection of the Right to Privacy in Europe, European governments
cannot just start forcing service providers like us to implement a
blanket spying program on their users. And if that ever changed, we
would fight this to the end.
Privacy. It's not just our policy, it's our mission.

Sincerely,

Robert E.G. Beens
CEO StartPage.com and Ixquick.com

--snip--

Hope that helps some Yosem.

On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Yosem Companys <companys at stanford.edu> wrote:
> RT @bytesforall: "World's Most Private Search Engine"
> http://ixquick.com/eng/. Anyone evaluated this? #Pakistan #Privacy
> #NetFreedom #Google @PrivacySurgeon
> --
> Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys at stanford.edu.