Why You Shouldn’t Use Just One Search Engine? Privacy.

One recurring concern with search engines is the privacy of your searches. Does it matter which search engine you use? Do they really save your search history? If they do, what might they do with it? WIRED magazine recently printed a letter from American privacy advocate and search engine expert (she works with Ixquick, also known as startpage) Katherine Albrecht, reprinted here in it’s entirety:

Dear Colleague:

Recent privacy discussions about Microsoft and Google have re-ignited the important debate about search engine privacy. In a CNBC interview aired last week, the issue was made clear:

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google — do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

[Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew

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Even a Mozilla executive is now recommending on his blog that people look at alternative search engines for privacy reasons.

[Source: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/12/if_you_have_nothing.html ]

Startpage by Ixquick is a search engine that is uniquely positioned to be that alternative.

Fully focused on privacy since 2006, Startpage (known as Ixquick.com in Europe) is the only major search engine that does not retain your personal data.

Startpage’s privacy policy is widely considered the best in the industry:

– No recording of your IP address.
– No identifying cookies.
– No collecting of personal data.
– No sharing of personal data with third parties.
– Offering secure, encrypted connections (HTTPS/SSL)
– And a full proxy service to be launched next month.

This information could be a useful resource to your audience in these important discussions.

Sincerely,

Dr. Katherine Albrecht
US Media Relations,
Startpage by Ixquick

Dr. Albrecht is a privacy campaigner who combines thorough academic research and social action to spotlight important privacy and freedom issues. She has spearheaded the worldwide movement against RFID tracking and implant technologies through boycotts, exposes, and street-level protests since 2003. She is also the Director of CASPIAN Consumer Privacy (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), an 18,000-member grass-roots organization she founded in 1999 to oppose shopper surveillance.