Microsoft and Yahoo! trumpet anti-Google privacy policies Unable to keep up with Google's market share, the other big search engines are determined to top its privacy policies. Last week, Ask.com announced new software that keeps web searches completely anonymous - a first among major search engines - and now Microsoft and Yahoo! have unveiled their own brand-spanking-new privacy …
Dear reader,
None of this is new to Ixquick.com. Although a relatively small search engine we are considered the industry leader when it comes to search Privacy. As a rule, we delete our users' IP addresses within 48 hrs and do NOT store any unique user ID cookies.
This has been our practice since June 2006, when we became the world's first search engine to take this pioneering step. Our service is available today.
You can find more information on Ixquick and our privacy policy at:
http://us.ixquick.com/eng/protect_privacy.html
http://us.ixquick.com/eng/privacy-policy.html
Please feel free to contact us for additional information.
Sincerely,
Robert E.G. Beens
CEO Ixquick.com
Yahoo will only remove part of the IP address just like Google, which means it's still very easy to tie search results back to the user's IP.
Demand better from these companies. In the future you'll wish that you hadn't let these companies record your every move so easily. Governments and corporations are buying, selling, trading and stealing your information. They are building a permanent record and profile on you that WILL restrict your freedom in the future.
Special thanks to companies and entrepreneurs alike that respect privacy and are building businesses around this respect, in our ever more easily trackable lives. Cheers to Ixquick and others!
I sent Google several e-mails and left comments in their privacy and public policy blog with no results. The question I asked is why they need identifying information AT ALL. They can do all the search engine optimization they need with purely generic information so all these privacy policies and such are total BS.
Why is it that the CEO of a company believes it's okay to shamlessly plug his pathetic search engine on the comments section of an article, when it be used to provide personal comments of individuals views. While I know views of the public are generally not unbiased, they don't tend to intentionally advertise a direct competitor(s) of the companies targeted by the article.
This is not an advertising forum and people like Mr. Bean (I know, it's Beens, but the reference was satisfying!) should have their accounts suspended in my view. That posting was not a personal view of an individual that does not have an alterior motive behind it. It was an advertisement.
While I admit it is great Ixquick is protecting peoples privacy, I think it's despicable what their CEO has done here (though I highly doubt he even typed the posting himself). If you want advertising:
A) Pay for it like most organisations
B) Develop a GOOD search engine that will get you noticed (Like Google and the others did)
C) Do something that irritates the general public to draw attention to your company (Like Google and the others did), and then try to correct it (Like Google and the others did).
Remeber, no publicity is bad publicity. But your actions here are disgusting at best, and while I despise the data retention activities of the other search engines, I for one will never be using yours.
Seeing Microsoft playing the privacy advocate here is like having a fox in a hen farm!... Google has a proven track record of keeping is users information private and fighting for its users, unlike Microsoft and Yahoo! that tend to give away users information a little too easily to my taste.
You guys do what you want, but personally, I'll stick with Google and it's not about to change.
The growing range of services offered by Google and other search portals poses an increasing threat to privacy. By offering a complete range of services ranging from email, search, calendar, to e-paiement, they can easily build a complete profile of your entire digital life. What is really worrisome is the level of detail of your profile that can be built by correlating the data gathered on an entire suite of services that uses a single user name and password. What is really new here is the simplicity of correlating data, rather than the mere fact that this data exists.
I think it is fair for the EU to place boundaries around what a company may do with private data. In France for example, we follow the very strict privacy law that prevents us from storing any personal information that can be traced back to the individual.
Francois Bourdoncle, CEO, Exalead
Brian,
you may have a (bit of a) point, but it would have been just as easy for Mr. Beens to come on here and say...
"hey, i've found this great little search engine which gives me excellent results, deletes my ip address within 48 hours and stores no cookies.
from: a randiom reader"
he may have plugged, but at least you know he was plugging
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