Best privacy policy. Ever.
Tomás F. Serna
December 8, 2008
“Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (…). Your search history is your business, not ours.” (…)
Now, this is refreshing.
This privacy policy belongs to cuil.com, a somewhat recent initiative in the Internet ‘search’ business arena.
Founded amongst others by ex-googlers and billed as the “biggest Internet search engine” –it claims to have 120 billion web pages in its index, “3x more than any other search engine“–, Cuil inc. “analyzes de web, not its users“. That last one, is another line I love. You’ll be able to find it in the site’s FAQ.
Ixquick, a EU based search engine that was awarded the first European Privacy Seal (EuroPriSe) earlier this year, comes close to this. They recognize that search history can poise a serious privacy problem and they provide the following approach: They state that the only real solution is to delete user’s data and they promise to do so after 48 hours.
This was groundbreaking for me when I discovered Ixquick through EuroPriSe a couple months ago. It still is when compared to policies operated by major search engines out there. But Cuil’s way of tackling the issue is a much better one for the privacy conscious user. Or for any kind user for that matter. The first and foremost solution is to not record personal information from users in the first place.
So kudos to Cuil! This is a true breakthrough in the search engine business model. I really hope they can keep it up.
On a final note, I’d like to direct readers to Ixquick’s privacy information pages. Some interesting information over privacy and search engines there.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI | bookmark on del.icio.us.
Leave a comment
Advertencia de Protección de Datos:
Los datos personales capturados con ocasión de la utilización del formulario de comentarios (nombre/apodo, dirección de correo electrónico, sitio web y dirección IP), serán incluidos en un fichero del propietario del sitio web y se publicarán (excepto su dirección de correo electrónico y su dirección IP) en esta página con la finalidad de permitir opinar públicamente al lector, así como para en su caso contestar al comentario o consultas que formule. Podrá ejercitar sus derechos de acceso, de rectificación, de cancelación y de oposición en lo referido a dichos datos personales dirigiendo un correo electrónico a la dirección: datos.personales@blogeuropa.eu.
----
Privacy notice:
Please be informed that by using the comments form, your personal data (name/nickname, e-mail address, website and IP address), will be included in a file owned by the website proprietor and published along your comment (except for your e-mail and IP addresses), in order for the reader to publicly comment, as well as -should that be the case-, to respond to any comment or query that readers may have made. You will be able to exercise your rights to access, rectify, cancel and oppose such personal data by sending an e-mail to the following address: datos.personales@blogeuropa.eu.