If information isn’t collected, it can’t be stolen, demanded, leaked or abused. Protecting your personal data is the best way to safeguard your online privacy.

Our definition of personal data is based on the privacy laws and regulations of the EU, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These are widely regarded as the strongest privacy protections in the world. We consider any information about you or your behavior that can be traced back to you as personal data.

Information we don’t collect

So let’s be perfectly clear:

• We don’t record your IP address
  • The only exception is for automated search requests (robots) that rapidly submit more queries to our servers than any normal human would. When our software detects potential abuse, we register and block the offending IP address in order to keep our service safe and free.
• We don’t serve any tracking or identifying cookies
  • This is about "good" and "bad" cookies. Cookies are small pieces of data that are sent to your hard drive by websites you visit. "Bad" cookies have unique elements that can track all kinds of personal information. We don’t serve any of those. Startpage uses just one "good" cookie called "preferences" in order to remember the search preferences you choose. It’s completely anonymous and expires after not visiting Startpage for 90 days.

When you search, your query is automatically stripped of unnecessary metadata including your IP address and other identifying information. We send the anonymized search query to our search and content providers and return the search results to you. We don’t log your searches.

To prevent abuse such as robotic high-volume querying, we anonymously determine the frequency of popular search keywords as a part of our anti-abuse measures, while protecting your privacy.

We do measure overall traffic numbers and some other – strictly anonymous – statistics. These stats may include the number of times our service is accessed by a certain operating system, a type of browser, a language, etc., but we don’t know anything about individual users.

Most online advertising today is personalized, meaning that online advertising services track what you do online and profile you in order to serve tailored ads. We don’t do that at Startpage. No tracking. No profiling!

Our search result pages may include a small number of clearly labeled "sponsored links," which generate revenue and cover our operational costs. Those links are retrieved from platforms such as Google AdSense. In order to enable the prevention of click fraud, some non-identifying system information is shared, but because we never share personal information or information that could uniquely identify you, the ads we display are not connected to any individual user.

It’s a myth that search engines need to profile you in order to earn decent money. Startpage serves strictly non-personalized ads. Sure, our ads make only a fraction of what other search engine ads make, but they pay all our bills.

When you contact us via email or through our support center, we’ll use the contact information provided to respond to you. Additional information can be found in our Support Privacy Policy.

They can’t request what we don’t have. Any request will have to come from Dutch judicial authorities. We’ll only comply if we’re legally obliged to do so. But we’re not likely to receive requests by governments to hand over user data – simply because we don’t have any.

Fortunately, we are based in the EU, where we have strong laws that protect your right to privacy. European governments can’t legally force service providers like Startpage to implement a blanket spying program.

We are located in the EU, and we fully comply with applicable privacy laws and regulations of the EU, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These are widely regarded as the strongest privacy protections in the world.

Looking for a quick win to improve your own GDPR compliance? Setting Startpage as the default search engine on all your organization’s IT equipment will help you minimize the amount of personal data that is processed by or for your organization. This can also help you implement important privacy principles, such as data minimization, storage limitation, privacy by design and privacy by default.

Citizens in the EU have the right to request the deletion of search results that disclose their personal data when those results are inaccurate or no longer relevant. Find out how we have implemented this right here.

We are always here to help. If you have any feedback or complaint about our services in general, or more specifically about how your privacy is protected when you use our services, please let us know via the contact details below. In accordance with EU privacy laws and regulations, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the national supervisory authority responsible for the protection of personal data if you think we have unlawfully processed your personal data. For the Netherlands, this supervisory authority is the Dutch Data Protection Authority, which you can contact here.

The Startpage Private Browser app for iOS and Android uses Startpage as its default search engine. Search queries are not collected, stored, or shared with third parties. While using the app, your privacy is now enhanced beyond what we have been able to offer on the startpage.gg website, in that the third-party websites you visit within the app are not tracked, whether in a Regular or Private tab. Your browsing history is only available to you, on your own device. Your search and browsing history are not stored in our server logs. Additionally, within the app, we offer the option to utilize Anonymous View for browsing, allowing you to maintain anonymity to the third-party websites you visit, if desired.

Diagnostic reports 

If the Startpage Private Browser app crashes or freezes, a report is sent to us to assist us in identifying and resolving the issue. This report may include technical details about the device and what triggered the problem, but does not include personally identifying information (like your IP address). We utilize a service called Sentry to store these reports.

Product analytics

Anonymized analytics within the Startpage Private Browser app alert us when there are major product issues or outages, and help inform what enhancements may be needed to improve the experience. The analytics do not include personally identifying information (like IP address), or information about your searches or browsing activity. Example anonymized analytics are total number of installs, volumes of usage, errors, downtime, or whether new features are being used.

Product event analytics are powered by a service called Amplitude, and when this service is being used, data is proxied through servers managed by Startpage to ensure that personally identifying data is stripped before making its way to the service. The analytics cannot be pieced together to identify an individual user, and your searches and browsing history are neither logged on our servers nor sent to Amplitude.

Still have privacy questions?

Startpage is owned and operated by Surfboard Holding BV, Wilhelmina van Pruisenweg 104
2595 AN, Den Haag, The Netherlands. You can contact us at [email protected]