Dutch internet search engine claims to offer total privacy
02 Feb 2009
Amsterdam - A Dutch company says it has developed the world's first internet search engine that guarantees users absolute privacy. Ixquick (www.ixquick.com), established in 1998, is a so-called meta-search engine, which uses the search results of several search engines to provide its own list of results. The search is available in 17 languages.
"Ixquick is the first search engine that does not even store IP addresses temporarily," Ixquick CEO Robert Beens told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Most search engines store users' Internet Provider (IP) addresses on its servers - and leave so-called "cookie" on each of the users' computers that track his or her search behaviour.
With Ixquick, all IP addresses and anonymized files, the latter of which are used by search engines like Google and Yahoo to optimize its search results, are erased from its servers.
One of its latest features is technology that can instantly differentiate a human using its search engine, from a search robot doing the same, according to Beens.
Search robots often perform automated searches on search engines to acquire addresses and privacy details.
A robot can perform tens of thousands of searches per minute, resulting in a substantial slow-down of the server.
In order to avoid search robot abuse, Ixquick previously stored IP addresses for 48 hours, the time needed to trace and block the search robot's IP addresses.
"But our new technology can recognize and block a search robot instantly," says Beens.
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