Worrying news about Startpage and DuckDuckGo

Dr.Flay

Startpage and System1 Abuse Your Privacy Under the Guise of ‘Privacy One Group’
http://techrights.org/2019/10/16/startpage-is-surveillance/
![alt text]( image url)

Until evidence of collected data and where it has ended up is in more news stories, the jury is still out as far as I'm concerned.

I do already use searx to search startpage anyway so it doesnt bother me.any way.

Catweazle

Interesting article, although I have always been clear that privacy does not exist on the network. We can only use tools that protect to a greater or lesser extent that too many details are recorded on our activities We can say that Startpage, DDG, Mozilla and even Linux are not private, as described in this article, but we can also say that the Internet is not private. Our data is registered at the same time when we turn on the router, everything else depends on ourselves, not on the tools we use.Everything we write in this forum or in any other social network is public domain. If we use Facebook it doesn't matter if we use Startpage, DDG, Google, Mozilla or TOR.

LonM

@Dr-Flay I must have missed it, but where does this article talk about ddg?

Catweazle

@LonM said in Worrying news about Startpage and DuckDuckGo:

@Dr-Flay I must have missed it, but where does this article talk about ddg?

I have reviewed this blog a little, by the way marked as unsafe by Vivaldi, and in general I find it a bit conspiranoic

hlehyaric

@LonM Actually nowhere. There is just a vague and general statement about DDG being surveillance and false marketing of privacy. That's all.

Dr.Flay

The new investors may be an advert company, but all they crave is money so as long as they can still make money without tracking or selling user data, they are happy.
Startpage have responded with official and semi-official comments and statements via reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/StartpageSearch/
https://www.reddit.com/r/StartpageSearch/comments/djshn3/hello_reddit_startpage_mod_team/

This page in the official knowledgebase gives me a lot of faith, so I do think it is the eternal problem of guilt by association.
https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/714/0/how-can-your-privacy-policies-be-verified-can-users-trust-startpagecom-to-do-what-it-says

The possible British Virgin islands connection is actually very likely as far as I can tell for "Privacy One Group", which is an obvious
shell-company.
Standard practice for anyone that;
a) doesn't want to pay tax
b) wants to be private/secret

That itself is a (dirty) money-maker (or a money-loss-avoider) so again I can't draw any privacy-invading conclusion from the choice of head office location.
Except that it does seem Startpage will not be contributing to the tax of the country they are actually in from now on.
(lot of it about these days eh !)

QuHno

Quick fact check, no rating in any way:

Startpage says on their support site they are regularily certified by EuroPriSe (European Privacy Seal). Quote:

EuroPriSe performed a thorough audit of our privacy and data-handling practices in 2007/2008, and has regularly certified us since.

According to EuroPriSe, they were certified 3 times and it is it is some time ago that the seal expired:

30/06/2015 - (Recertification)
Ixquick and Startpage
Register No. EP-S-LNX9Z0, valid until 30/06/2017

This does not mean in any way that they have no certification, maybe by another independent audit, but only that they don't mention any of that on their support site linked above and that I didn't find any further hard facts about it.

Dr.Flay

If their last one has expired, it may be a good publicity move to get another done now as the last one was before the investment.

The fact they go through this process at all, is why I believe that a new one will still show them in a good standing.

You can accept advert sponsorship and not track per user. All you need is to show adverts based on what search terms were used.
A good example would be https://hidemysearches.com/about/

QuHno

@Dr-Flay I wonder why hidemysearches doesn't use POST but GET in their search form at the top of the about page and on their homepage ...

Catweazle

@QuHno said in Worrying news about Startpage and DuckDuckGo:

@Dr-Flay I wonder why hidemysearches doesn't use POST but GET in their search form at the top of the about page and on their homepage ...

All search engine I use are put in POST, Startpage too