Startpage is owned by an ad-tech agency (System1). While Startpage might truly keep data private, it’s non-obvious why a System1, a publicly traded US company, would want an ownership stake in a “private search engine”.
Though System1 alleges that they have no plans to tinker with Startpage, it’s unclear that they actually don’t.
There may not actually be anything wrong with having the outside investment, but I think that Startpage as a recommendation should come with a warning like this – since you have to dig around Startpage’s site to find this info.
I gave startpage a good go. Changed all from duck to startpage. After a day moved it all back. I searched for something simple, can’t remember now, but it gave no results. I searched again thinking network error, still no results. Went back to duck and results.
Startpage failed for me. Whether it’s private etc
Perhaps it would be better to highlight the fact it is owned by System1. Like Even though it’s mentioned on the listing, better to outright highlight it, so as to avoid further calls to remove Startpage, until any future relevant issue to privacy from their end.
Fingerprinting, bad security practices with their Chromium fork, unreliability (I get blocked even without a VPN/Tor sometimes). Please remove startpage, there is no reason to use it as the other search engine options are much better.
EDIT: also, imo, not blocking Tor/VPNs should be a hard requirement for the search engine category.
As much as I dislike it, not relevant for their search engine. We could eventually make it clear than endorsing a Search engine, doesn’t mean endorsing their Browser.
What is your config ? I haven’t had problems, but I use it for 1/1000 search.
I kinda agree. Though all 3 GSE we list have .onion, albeit with various captchas presence.
yeah but it’s a big security fuckup. If they do shit like this, why trust their security practices on other products?
I use librewolf, but I enabled SP in my mum’s stock android phone thinking that wouldn’t be an issue and she got constantly blocked. The result? My mum is back using Google and now isn’t open to try alternative search engines anymore
Already have Brave Search on my browser I use for logging in. Considering a separate browser with a different search engine to compartmentalise my general web browsing.
Neither, they’re both sketchy. Some are recommending Brave, but they did some stuff as well. I’m currently using SwissCows, as they’re the only decent search engine that is not doing anything shady (that I’m aware of).
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