New incognito search engine

[GreyGeek]

.... Now, I too am suspicious about just how much anonymity one can achieve.

In my opinion, very little. That's why I make no attempt to conceal my identity when I post. My handle is easily connected to my real name and address. IF my political opinions were a threat to my personal freedom and/or safety in a country where freedom of speech and political association are written into the 1st Amendment then the ball game is over. If I lived under a dictatorship, or PC run amoke, and I could be imprisoned for expressing views contrary to group think, then I would try to anonymize my internet connections, but I know that such attempts may keep Joe or Sally Sixpack from learning who I am but it wouldn't in any way hinder a government supported group of hackers from determining who I am. They could, for example, intercept packets from both sides of an anonymizer and compare the input packets with the output packets. It wouldn't take much to determine the IP of input packets that compared in all respects, except the output integer, to determine the IP of the sender.

IF I wanted secrecy I would use a 1024 or 2048 or 4096 by encryption key, encrypt all my messages, and give the public key to those whom I wanted to read my messages. But, how long could I keep my key secret if I am tied to a chair and being hit with clubs or had electric wires attached to body parts? Probably not long at all unless the revelation would cause someone else to lose their life.

[Guest]

Dear Forum Members,

As the CEO of Ixquick and Startpage.com I was asked by 'Dennis' to contribute some background information about our search engines privacy practices to this forum.

Recognizing the importance of search engine privacy as early as 2006, we were the first search engine to start protecting this important civil right.
Protecting the privacy of our users has been our full focus ever since. More information can be found here: https://ixquick.com/eng/protect-privacy.html

We initially focused on logging of IP addresses and ID-cookies. In 2006 we started deleting all IP addresses completely from our log files. Initially we kept IP addresses for 48 hours to be able to block automatic programs that abused our site by 'scraping' the search results. This increased server loads and costs and increased response times. In 2009 - after we were able to deploy more advanced abuse detection systems - we stopped logging IP's altogether and since then only keep it in cache for a few minutes. https://ixquick.com/eng/press/pr-zeroip.html There is no legal obligation for search engines to store any data whatsoever by the way. This is different for ISP's and Telco's.

We also stopped the use of identifiable cookies very early and now offer a completely cookie free service. We offer a a settings-specific URL on our settings page.
If people rather want to use an 'non-id cookie' to set their preferences in - it's also possible. https://ixquick.com/do/preferences.p...age_ui=english

Then we continued with further privacy enhancing features.
While not storing IP's and getting rid of cookies offered the possibility to search in privacy - clicking on a search result - including the sponsored links - would still take the user outside our website and privacy protection and revealing his/her identity.
To facilitate also being able to review a found web site's content in privacy we started offering a "proxy" service in 2010: https://ixquick.com/proxy/eng/help.html
Clicking on the word ' Proxy' underneath a search result opens the website through our servers - keeping the users unknown to those website.

The difference between Ixquick and Startpage is the source of the search results. Startpage offers Google syndicated feed search results for which we have to pay.
Ixquick offers a combination of various search engines sources like Yahoo - Gigablast - open directory etc. The combined services delivered well over 2 million searches per day in March of this year.

Trust is everything in privacy. To facilitate this we have undergone a very stringent certification process by Europrise - an EU funded privacy certification entity from Germany. https://www.european-privacy-seal.eu...elease-en.html This process has taken us close to a year and went into unbelievable detail. It includes random checks and updates.

In 2011 we decided to change to default HTTPS to prevent ISP's from snooping. Over the last 2 years we have been working very hard to offer a truly private Web mail program. It will have various forms of mail encryption and many privacy features. We hope to release it by the end of this year.

Hope this information will contribute to a better understanding of our position in the privacy world to your forum members.

Sincerely,

Robert Beens
CEO Ixquick.com / Startpage.com

[SteveRiley]

Robert, on behalf of all of us at KFN, I wish to extend my gratitude to you. It's truly rare that an organzation would choose to comment about their policies on forums such as ours. I commend you for that.

While investigating EuroPrise, I noticed that you renewed your certification after the first one expired. I also noticed that EuroPrise publishes the summary findings -- which I had planned to ask whether you'd be willing to share but now don't need to.

I am considering de-Goolefying at least part of my online existence, so I'll take note of your forthcoming email service when it's ready.

[bra|10n]

SteveRiley for your response also in representing KFN. I too received an email pointing out a post had indeed been made. Remarkable all 'round...

[Stosskraft]

Another privacy enhanced search is ixquick's startpage: https://startpage.com/

Choose your poison, but since it's mostly a matter of trust, you should probably pick one of the more established players.

Of course, practically any search engine is likely to be more private than google.

I have switched to them also. really happy with the searches. Just wish I could pull myself away from gmail.

[bra|10n]

Startpage privacy policy gets even better.
Thursday, July 5th, 2012

Startpage Stops Recording Browser and Platform Information Entirely.

Great news! As of this week, Startpage will no longer record browser type and platform information (also known as the "user agent") of our users. This change has gone live on both Startpage and our sister search engine Ixquick (www.Ixquick.com), and translation of the text into non-English languages is underway.

https://startpage.com/eng/press/star...ts-better.html

[SteveRiley]

Just wish I could pull myself away from gmail.

Register your own domain with Dyn and run your own email server. I'm very happy with mine.

I suppose I should run through the setup process once more, documenting it step-by-step.

[Stosskraft]

Register your own domain with Dyn and run your own email server. I'm very happy with mine.

I suppose I should run through the setup process once more, documenting it step-by-step.

Sounds like a good idea. I am getting a website made for my small business so I will look into it.