Ixquick makes encryption the default for searches

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 26 October 2011 11:44

Business IT - Security

 

Concerned about others seeing your search requests? The Ixquick metasearch engine now uses SSL by default.

 

Ixquick has long taken pride in its security - if a search engine stores no information about your queries, there's nothing for hackers to find or for legal processes to uncover.

 

But with the growing trend towards mandating the retention of customer activity logs by ISPs (not to mention the possibility of packet sniffing on local networks) , those concerned with privacy would likely prefer to use HTTPS rather than HTTP when searching.

"Snooping ISP's or hackers could become an enormous, Orwellian privacy threat," said Ixquick CEO Robert Beens. "That's why we've decided to change our websites default to 100% SSL encryption, to further protect the privacy of our users' Internet searches."

Ixquick claims to have been the first search engine to offer SSL encryption (2009), and it does not record visits or searches. "When you use Ixquick.com or Startpage.com, your IP address is not recorded, your visit is not logged, and no tracking cookies are placed on your browser," said Beens. "In fact, We do not record any information about our users. Nothing. Nada. Zilch."

Google began offering SSL encrypted search in 2010, but stores all searches and does not anonymise the associated IP address for 9 months or cookies for 18 months.

SSL may not be bulletproof, but it does give a degree of privacy and provides some assurance that the user's browser really is connecting to the intended site.