Ixquick is a Dutch meta
search engine which runs queries through existing search engines,
and is committed to deleting user data to protect their
privacy.
The Privacy Seal is an award from EuroPriSe, whose members
include the Independent Centre for Privacy Protection
Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, the data protection authorities from
Madrid and France, the Austrian Academy of Science and the London
Metropolitan University.
Ixquick chief executive Robert Beens told this week's edition of
OUT-LAW Radio that the award was an
important validation that his company follows through on its
privacy pledges.
"It's the ultimate proof to our users that Ixquick does what we
say we're doing," said Beens. "It's the proof we live up to our
promises."
Ixquick is a 10-year-old search engine but in 2006 Beens decided
to make privacy its defining feature.
"In June of 2006 we were the first search engine to start
deleting our users' privacy sensitive details from our log files,"
said Beens. "It started when I was doing a legal view of the
company and I tried to do an in-depth investigation of our own
liabilities and one of them was our keeping of user data."
"So I asked the technology people what exactly are we keeping
and why are we keeping those data?" said Beens. "I said, 'Why are
we keeping those data?' – and they didn't give me a good
answer."
"The only safe way of keeping someone's personal data is by
deleting it," he said.
European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx has been a
consistent opponent of larger search engines' policies of retaining
search query data for up to 18 months. He said that the Privacy
Seal was a good way to make it clear which companies have privacy
friendly policies.
"The awarding of the first European Privacy Seal to the meta
search engine Ixquick marks an important milestone to implement
privacy on the World Wide Web and highlights this privacy-friendly
service," said Hustinx.
"Customers and enterprises benefit from easy identification of
an IT product as ensuring or enhancing European Data Protection
rules in the processing of data," said Viviane Reding, EU
Commissioner for the information society. "The award of the first
European Privacy Seal to the meta-search engine Ixquick underlines
that a balance between the open nature of the internet, providers'
interests and the protection of personal data of internet users is
possible."
Privacy watchdogs have been at loggerheads with Google in
particular about the retention of search logs. Google has argued
that it believes the Data Retention Directive orders it to keep the
data, but a committee of EU data protection regulators said that it
believed that the Directive applied only to telecoms companies and
not to web content companies such as Google.
