Today's codewords are:
langstaff bottle aardvark
You can find your secret decoder ring in specially marked boxes of Post
Toasties.
On 09/07/2013 07:57 AM, emptybill wrote:
*WHICH INTERNET COMPANY /HASN'T/ GIVEN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT ITS RECORDS? *
June 10, 2013
NEW YORK: Outraged Internet users searching for an alternative to the
privacy-busting companies they'd trusted are turning to a company that
provides what it calls, "the world's most private search engines."
*StartPage*and its sister search engine *Ixquick* were launched in
2006 to staunchly defend their users' privacy and civil liberties.
StartPage provides a private portal to Google results, while Ixquick
provides private results from other search engines.
The services have not participated in PRISM, nor have they ever
provided user data to the U.S. government or to any other government
or agency in the U.S. or anywhere in the world.
That is more than nine of the biggest Internet companies -- Apple,
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, PalTalk, AOL and Skype --
can say.
"The Privacy of our users rests on three important foundations,"
explains StartPage and Ixquick CEO Robert Beens. "We are based in the
Netherlands, we use encrypted connections, and -- most importantly --
we don't store or share any of our users' personal search data."
* *No User Data Stored:*StartPage and Ixquick never store user data,
including IP addresses and search queries, so government agencies
have no incentive to ask for these. This privacy is so complete;
the company doesn't even know who its customers are, so it can't
share anything with Big Brother.
* *Encrypted (HTTPS) Connections:*StartPage and Ixquick were the
first search engines to use automatic encryption on all
connections to prevent snooping. When searches are encrypted,
third parties like ISPs and the NSA can't eavesdrop on Internet
connections to see what people are searching for.
* *Not Under U.S. Jurisdiction:*StartPage and Ixquick are based in
the Netherlands, so they are not directly subject to U.S.
regulations, warrants, or court orders. They can't be forced to
participate in spying programs like PRISM. The company has never
turned over a single bit of user data to any government entity in
the 14 years it has been in business, which is not surprising
since there is no data in the first place.
StartPage and Ixquick are also the only search engines whose privacy
practices have been independently verified and third-party certified
<https://www.european-privacy-seal.eu/awarded-seals/de-110022/>
through the European Union's Privacy Seal program.
"Unfortunately, it takes a scandal like PRISM to wake people up to the
erosion of privacy", says Harvard-trained privacy expert Dr. Katherine
Albrecht, who helped develop StartPage. "As people get fed up with
being spied on, they look for alternatives. We already serve nearly 3
million private searches each day, and we expect that number to grow
as people seek shelter from search engines that store and share their
private information."
The company will expand its privacy services this summer with the
addition of a new private email product called StartMail
<https://www.startmail.com/>. StartMail will offer a paid, private
email platform with strong encryption. Anyone interested in beta
testing the program on its release can sign up at www.StartMail.com
<https://www.startmail.com/>
*E.U. Contact Person*:
Alex van Eesteren
Sales & Business Development
www.StartPage.com <https://startpage.com> // www.Ixquick.com
<https://www.ixquick.com>
+31-30-6971778
