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Since using startpage everytime I search for anything on google I get email adverts following up on my recent searches. Last month for examples I've tried to look for holiday destinations and suddenly my yahoo emails are flooded with adverts from travel websites promoting the destinations I had searched for and tripadvisor asking me if I still want to go there. Mind you when I did my search I never logged into any website including tripadvisor, I only did the search on StartPage. It's awful!
Hala T.'s review of StartPage earned 20 Very Helpful votes
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Hi Hala. If you are seeing ads based on things you've searched for in the past through StartPage, that is not something we are doing. We do not record your searches, and we do not share your information with advertisers. We can't, because we don't record your data.
(In fact, our privacy promises are 3rd-party certified. You can read more about this here: https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/714/0/how-can-your-privacy-policies-be-verified-can-users-trust-startpage-to-do-what-it-says)
The ads you are seeing probably result from a cookie you picked up when you left StartPage by clicking on a website result. Here's how it works:
Whenever you search with StartPage, your search is not recorded, your IP address is not recorded, your identity is not recorded, no tracking cookies are placed on your browser, and our SSL Encryption ensures that your ISP and hackers can't eavesdrop. You are never seen by Google, even though you receive authentic Google results through StartPage.
That protection applies 100% to your searches. However, when you click on a search result, whether you got it from us, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine, you leave the search engine that gave you the link and go somewhere else.
Wherever you go, once you leave StartPage, you can be seen, recorded, and tracked by the website you are going to, plus by all of its advertising and marketing and tracking partners and affiliates.
Third-party websites can place cookies on your browser that record your visit and indicate your interest in the contents on their websites. Marketers can later use those cookies to determine your past browsing history and serve you ads about those topics.
To avoid this, you can use the free StartPage Proxy which allows you to visit third-party websites through StartPage without anyone, including the website and its partners, seeing you. Our proxy service is unique, and the privacy protection it provides is not available through any other search engine.
To learn more about the StartPage Proxy and how it works, please visit this link: https://www.startpage.com/proxy/eng/help.html
If you have any other questions, please email our support team: Support@StartPage.com