Did StartPage just began using banner ads in the last week or so? I have been using StartPage as my search engine for quite some time and have never noticed this type of an ad before. Also, anyone else having problems now with StartPage not using their custom search settings? The settings are still as I originally set them but they seem to be ignored.
From their About page: https://www.startpage.com/uk/company-background.html Financial StartPage is a privately held company, so we do not report financial information. We can report that we are fiscally sound and have been profitable for the last five years. To facilitate the user experience, StartPage has opted for a clean and simple user interface with a minimum of advertisements. Some result pages show relevant sponsored results which are clearly indicated at the top of the page and limited to three sponsored results per page. The presentation of these ads has been carefully thought through to safeguard user's privacy, and at no point does StartPage ever share personal user data with any third party.
Yes, they have had sponsored search results in the past which were clearly labeled as sponsored. I haven't noticed a non text based ad before though.
The ad is why I use uBlock Origin. One right click on the ad and one left click to confirm my choice makes it go away!!
I do have uBlock Origin and have made the ad disappear. I am just concerned with the fact that StartPage is now serving ads.
startpage is advertisement itself blocked by default for any system here. Ixquick (meta search engine) failed at all as it merged with startpage. DIE ZEIT wrote that startpage shows also google results for which google pays...
A little more info. This is from a generic email StartPage/StartMail sent out... "StartPage and StartMail are proud to partner with Fathom Events to bring Edward Snowden's privacy message to U.S. theaters nationwide on September 14. In fact, we consider this event so important that through September 14, we are posting links to more information in the sidebar of every StartPage.com and Ixquick.com search results page." It's still an ad. But this does give us a little more to consider.
I'm still not a fan of them showing an ad but that makes me feel a little better since it was about privacy matters and seemingly a one time thing (hopefully).
