Ixquick is
a meta search engine which uses other search engines to provide
results to users' queries. It has made privacy its main selling
point since 2006.
Internet protocol (IP) addresses identify the internet
connection used to perform tasks online. Along with data from the
user's internet service provider (ISP) this can lead to the
identification of the individual behind an action, though it does
not always do so.
While search engines such as Google keep data for nine months,
Ixquick has until now deleted it after 48 hours. It now says that
it can operate without the data altogether.
"The technical need to store IP addresses for 48 hours –
blocking automated use of Ixquick's servers – has been overcome by
recent technological developments," said an Ixquick statement. The
announcement has been timed to coincide with data protection day,
which is today.
"At Ixquick we feel people have a fundamental right to privacy,"
said Ixquick chief executive Robert Beens. "Using a search engine
is sharing your innermost secrets and habits which should be safe.
Ixquick has the best privacy policy of the search industry. Today
it has become even better."
Search engines' IP address retention policies have only recently
become controversial, but are now a bone of contention between
search engine companies. Google announced in 2007 that it would
stop keeping logs indefinitely and would delete them after 18 to 24
months.
That led privacy activists and officials to look into the
retention of IP addresses and criticise all search engines for
keeping them for so long.
Google reduced the time that it kept addresses first to 18
months and then, last September, to nine months. Yahoo! announced
in December that it would only retain the addresses for three
months.
Search engines have said that they need to keep IP addresses to
improve the usefulness, security and functionality of their
services. Privacy watchdogs have said that the information should
not be kept for longer than necessary to make the services
work.
The Article 29 Working Party, which is a committee made up of
the privacy watchdogs of the European Union's 27 member states,
said last year in a report on the issue that any company that kept
logs for longer than six months risked falling foul of data
protection laws.
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