Bonum Certa Men Certa

Startpage CEO Robert Beens in 'Damage Control' Mode, Trying to Get Startpage Relisted After Selling to a Massive Surveillance Company

"Hard to believe that privacy advocates are giving a pass to System1, but money talks."

Robert BeensSummary: PrivacytoolsIO is being lobbied by the CEO of Startpage to relist Startpage, based on no actual refutations at all

THE SAGA continues. System1 is starting to realise that its 'investment' in (i.e. purchase of) Startpage may have scared away otherwise-privacy-conscious users.



We've been tracking their steps, expecting something to be done in addition to lies and deception.

It didn't take long.

According to Crunchbase, "Robert is CEO of StartPage/Ixquick and oversees all company aspects including operations, product development, technology and finance. He has a special interest in consumer Privacy. He earned his Master's degree in Corporate, Social & Economic Dutch Law from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands."

"We've been tracking their steps, expecting something to be done in addition to lies and deception."Well, he may be going by the title of "CEO" (still), but his bosses are "an independent marketplace for keyword pay-per-click advertising. Its platform analyzes billions of consumer attributes and uses “pre-targeting” algorithms to unlock and fulfill consumer intent across channels including social, native, email, search, market research, and lead generation."

Nice, isn't it?

Why would PrivacytoolsIO even consider listing Startpage as a recommendation now? A cynic might think that something was offered in exchange for relisting. Just verbally maybe?

"A cynic might think that something was offered in exchange for relisting.""Hard to believe that privacy advocates are giving a pass to System1," a reader of ours said, "but money talks."

"PrivacytoolsIO de-listed Startpage and is now discussing re-listing at GitHub" (conversation here).

Putting aside the disturbing fact that PrivacytoolsIO uses the privacy-violating GitHub, what does this whole thing say?

One of them said, "I recommend re-listing, maybe we a add a flag about ownership w/ a link to their support page."

"Does Startpage respect privacy? Based on what?"This hogwash? Seriously? The surveillance company is talking about itself. It's not even an outside audit.

Does Startpage respect privacy? Based on what? And watch the reply: "Thank you Jonah and Dan for starting the conversation to re-list Startpage on PrivacyTools. As you can see from the information we provided, we are committed to being transparent about our business and privacy practices."

Nonsense. What transparency? The only thing they want 'transparent' (spied on) is the users. As we covered before (see Startpage wiki page), they're secretive, misleading and incredibly facetious. Relisting Startpage, giving all that is known, would merely discredit PrivacytoolsIO as an authority on privacy. If they relist, it'll bode rather badly for PrivacytoolsIO itself.

"What transparency? The only thing they want 'transparent' (spied on) is the users."JonahAragon said: "the unsourced quotes in this post were from a letter shared with @danarel and myself from the Startpage CEO."

That also said (same page): "I dislike how this information was not communicated from the start, but ever since I have had no trouble communicating with them regarding these issues. I would probably be fine with relisting them as a search engine provider at this time."

"But hey, if that's good enough for PrivacytoolsIO, then I've had enough of PrivacytoolsIO.""From another reply, we know that Privacy One Group is a majority shareholder (51%+)," they noted. Well, that can be 99% or more. They refuse to say how much.

But hey, if that's good enough for PrivacytoolsIO, then I've had enough of PrivacytoolsIO.

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