Dutch Search Engine Dumps Yahoo
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 10/20/2016 12:26 PM
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Robert Beens, the CEO of the Dutch search engine StartPage, has announced that they are turning their backs on Yahoo.
Considering the massive data breach over two years ago and more recent allegations that it may have actively cooperated with US government agencies to spy on users, Beens said: “Yahoo has made it easy to walk away”.
Yahoo's data breach was one of the largest in history. It affected 500 million users and included names, emails, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and security question and answers.
StartPage is considered one of ‘the world's most private search engine'. StartPage claims to be “outside the reach of US data collection mandates”. As the world's “most trusted private search engine”, it offers a free proxy service with every search.
Beens has said that Yahoo's security will not impact StartPages' customers. "We are in between them (Yahoo) and our users, and our users' privacy doesn't depend on Yahoo's security.”
But, added Beens “we have a solid reputation as a privacy company,” and the recent revelations about Yahoo's practices “show choices were made at Yahoo not to invest in security and that they subsequently lied about 'government involvement'”.
“We can no longer be associated with a company that obviously doesn't have its security in order any more and can't be trusted with user information.” This clearly indicates, concluded Beens, “that US-based search engines can't be trusted on their word not to spy on their users, as they may be forced by US laws like the Patriot Act to engage in mass or individual surveillance and keep quiet about it because of gag orders.”
Beens predicted that other companies will follow StartPage's lead.
Source: SCMagazine
Considering the massive data breach over two years ago and more recent allegations that it may have actively cooperated with US government agencies to spy on users, Beens said: “Yahoo has made it easy to walk away”.Yahoo's data breach was one of the largest in history. It affected 500 million users and included names, emails, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and security question and answers.
StartPage is considered one of ‘the world's most private search engine'. StartPage claims to be “outside the reach of US data collection mandates”. As the world's “most trusted private search engine”, it offers a free proxy service with every search.
Beens has said that Yahoo's security will not impact StartPages' customers. "We are in between them (Yahoo) and our users, and our users' privacy doesn't depend on Yahoo's security.”
But, added Beens “we have a solid reputation as a privacy company,” and the recent revelations about Yahoo's practices “show choices were made at Yahoo not to invest in security and that they subsequently lied about 'government involvement'”.
“We can no longer be associated with a company that obviously doesn't have its security in order any more and can't be trusted with user information.” This clearly indicates, concluded Beens, “that US-based search engines can't be trusted on their word not to spy on their users, as they may be forced by US laws like the Patriot Act to engage in mass or individual surveillance and keep quiet about it because of gag orders.”
Beens predicted that other companies will follow StartPage's lead.
Source: SCMagazine
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