THE series about Startpage has been somewhat of a Techrights 'exclusive' and it leads us to identifying other surveillance culprits that mask themselves as the complete opposite. We must call them out because they put at great risk those who wrongly assume anonymity etc. In some countries this can lead to assassination, death penalty etc. This is no laughing matter or a luxury or a "first world problem"; it's a profoundly critical issue and a matter we'll write more about.

"They sent me the same 'waffle'. They don't actually deny anything.""We received a very general response that did not address key questions," PrivacyTools wrote last week. There have since then been a number of comments. Startpage/System1 people are still trying to evade answering questions directly, fully and transparently.

"On the 15th of October," PrivacyTools said, "it was brought to our attention that Startpage.com was reportedly (partially?) taken over by a company called the Privacy One Group, which is in turn owned by a company called System1. We found this quite remarkable as the two companies seem to have conflicting business models. Startpage has been known for basing their advertisements on what their users enter in their search bar. System1 on the other hand, is a pay-per-click advertising company that "has developed a pre-targeting platform that identifies and unlocks consumer intent across channels including social, native, email, search, market research and lead generation rather than relying solely on what consumers enter into search boxes. We reached out to System1 CEO Ian Weingarten for an explanation. We received a very general response that did not address key questions."

As before. They sent me the same 'waffle'. They don't actually deny anything. All these 'prepared' and reused statements are similar to those we hear from Andrew Saxe Coburg Gotha in his BBC interview.

"Seemingly prompted by our ongoing concerns," PrivacyTools continued, "Startpage released a public letter addressed to us from their CEO, and hosted a Q&A on their Subreddit to try and explain the situation. While some of our questions were answered, we noted that the company seemed to be evasive, essentially restating information from a previously published blog post or posting the same response to different questions. People had to really dig to get answers and puzzle all information together, instead of getting a clearly explained and comprehensive answer from the start. Requests for clarification to some important questions went ignored."

The issue has meanwhile been mentioned by other sites. "Privacytools.io delists Startpage from its list of privacy tools and services," said one such site. "Startpage had been taken over by Privacy One Group, which itself is owned by System1. System1 is a targeted advertising company with a business model that seemed—to many—to be in conflict with Startpage’s own privacy-centric model."

Notice what Dan Arel wrote in the comments: "You raise some of the best points I have heard about this statement by them. It’s amazing how they somehow manages to leave us with more questions, not fewer."

One has to conclude that they have no potent response/clarification/rebuttal/defense. Among the arguments: "If we know that System1 has a “majority ownership of Startpage” — a legal definition meaning more than 50% — do the specific percentages still matter?"

The proportion must be rather high; if it wasn't, they'd just say what it is (openly). ⬆