Reconsidering StartPage

[DeiAsPie]

Remove startpage or at least warn the users

The website says:
"Startpage is a search engine that provides Google search results. It is a very convenient way to get Google search results without experiencing dark patterns such as difficult captchas or being refused access because you used a VPN or Tor."

Which is clearly not the case as I have received this:

Often this appears more than once a day. Tried using different VPN providers too and confirmed from others, they experienced similar problems.

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A service that doesn't respect its users enough to let them use VPN/TOR might not be worth recommendation in my opinion.

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Nevertheless if value be found in its recommendation then the users should be made aware that they need to use it only when off VPN/Tor networks.

URL of affected page: https://privacyguides.org/search-engines/

[ghost]

It is to protect abuse against their service.

[dngray]

I have found that they do sometimes send you to this page. You can literally put anything in the email/description field and it will allow you to bypass it. Still better than an impossible round of Recaptchas.

[DeiAsPie]

Not that simple. Tried doing that many times.

Today I decided to do the searching without a VPN and guess what I was still presented with this page and after filling the form many times it would still not let me make the search and fall me back to the same page saying thanks for the feedback every time.

My possible hypothesis is that my ISP like many others rotates the IPs of the users after a fixed period of time. The last bearer of the IP did something that caused them to ban the IP itself.

My suggestion still would be to remove starpage as a search engine to naive new comers into the privacy world. Experiences such as these would only make their lives harder and even worse they would fall back to their old non private ways. The BARE MINIMUM to expect from the services being recommended to the users should be that they allow their users to use VPN. If y'all still find something value in the recommendation then at least put up a warning beneath the recommendation.

[DeiAsPie]

Their privacy policy says:

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.

Which means sooner or later whenever a VPN/Tor is used to search on their service they could annoy their users by landing them on this page or downright just block the VPN server.

Thus its incumbent on the team to warn the visitors of this possibility in advanced.

[dngray]

This isn't relevant, because you're only going to be picked up as an automated search if using a VPN, then it's not your IP anyway.