Based on authentic user experiences
Jessica Salmonson
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Startpage s CAPTICHA is idiotic and poor taste
The people at startpage are acting like Je ks using the dang CAPTCHA thing any spam is their problem not our problem and they shouldn t force uses to deal with something they can fix with far more user friendly methods Quote Search for the website siteboagworld then search why captcha sucks to find the referenced article We switched to the audio version in the hopes that would help It didn t It is beyond me how anybody with a visual impairment could decipher that noise CAPTCHA is in no way accessible To make matters worse my wife was trying to complete this task on a mobile device Refreshing the CAPTCHA was fiddly Each time she had to reselect the field to make another guess She also had to wait for the page to reload over the poor 3G connection It is not that my wife is an outlier 38 of people fail to complete a CAPTCHA first time From there things get even worse 80 of second attempts fail 70 of third attempts and 90 of fourth Few are willing to try more than five times and who can blame them And that was on a desktop Imagine what the failure rate is on a mobile device A device where the CAPTCHA picture is smaller and even harder to read But CAPTCHA isn t just frustrating for the user It is also bad for business When Reddit removed CAPTCHA from its signup process they saw an 8 increase That means CAPTCHA was driving away almost 10 of people The ridiculous thing is that CAPTCHA is unnecessary When it comes to SPAM there are alternatives to CAPTCHA Alternatives such as solving basic puzzles or using pictures But these alternatives miss the point They are still making spam the users problem Why should the user be inconvenienced because we have a problem with spam What is more there is no reason why the user needs to ever know about our spam problem Spam filters have become sophisticated and can remove the majority of attempts The Honeypot technique is another excellent solution A solution that doesn t need the user to do anything This involves creating a hidden field invisible to users but visible to bots The developer labels the field in such a way to encourage bots to spam it If the field has content in it then we can presume it is spam In fact there are no end of alternatives to CAPTCHA You have to wonder why it is still so popular In fact I have read comments that justify CAPTCHA on the basis that it is widely used This is of course circular logic The truth is CAPTCHA is easier and cheaper It is easier to make our problems with security and spam the users problem Easier than tackling the problem on our end The flaw in this logic is that in doing so we are driving those users away and that is costing us businesses money Get rid of the damn CAPTICHA I can t read it it s hard and and I m too deaf to use the auto version not to mention it s so annoying that I m now using Bing search fix this or watch as less people use your search I m not switching browsers just to use your search I love brave and refuse to compromise my security
Tom
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Startpage is yet another google
Startpage is yet another googleStartpage is yet another google It is based on Google and the search results are the same bizarre and biased as Google
Gena Ferde
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Trashy Anti-Privacy Search Engine
I have switched from StartPage to Qwant because I am tired of seeing this pop-up We apologize for the inconvenience to prevent possible abuse of the Startpage com service your Internet connection has been prevented from accessing it at this time This happens when a large number of search requests are received from one s Internet connection in a short amount of time -- for example if you are using screen-scraping software or if you are sharing a connection with many people perhaps through a proxy service Otherwise if you have received this message in error please help us in investigation by providing following information - Are you using TOR or other anonymous proxies - Do you have special browser configuration or extensions - Are you using VPN - Are you using a company network We will seek to refine and correct this whenever possible Thank you for your patience I don t have patience for a dishonest company like StartPage Claiming to care about privacy and making it hard for people to use a search engine when they use a proxy or V P N are two different things Which is why I got tired of StartPage s petty excuses especially since StartPage has stooped to very low level in regards to quality service StartPage used to have a better quality search engine before that pop-up started showing that I mentioned earlier I think that pop-up started showing after StartPage was using a captcha system Unfortunately it just makes StartPage look like a petty shadow that can t hold a candle to its former glory anymore Even Google and Qwant have more search results than StartPage does It s saddening but I already cried a river long ago So I m just here eating popcorn and mocking StartPage instead of taking it seriously which is why I call it FartPage because it s nasty like a fart with nasty quality of service
AHA
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Time for another search engine
Time for another search engine Tired of their Captcha I ts almost impossible to use with a Vpn It Dissruptive
Ena Ilferd
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Doesn t Work Like it Used To
The people who control StartPage pretentiously claim that StartPage is privacy friendly and yet those hypocrites have a problem when you are using a V P N to find search results If you can t use a V P N on StartPage then StartPage isn t really privacy friendly at all You re basically allowing your internet service provider to know what you re doing online while using StartPage if you are not using your V P N Which makes the phrase privacy friendly meaningless at that point StartPage has less search results than the Google search engine does Because I ve tried searching for songs on Spotify and StartPage doesn t have as much Spotify songs on its search engine compared to Google s search engine I have to go back and forth when I use Google s search engine and StartPage s search engine when StartPage is used for privacy and when Google is used for more search results because StartPage doesn t update its search engine as quickly as Google does I have to turn my V P N off and on sometimes because the StartPage system detects my V P N and doesn t let me look for search results which makes the phrase privacy friendly pointless I m getting tired of StartPage s pathetic excuses for having a worse service that it had a couple of years ago Also I can t use StartPage anymore unless I allow JavaScript and finish captcha puzzles which is a privacy nightmare already
Silvia Es
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Doesnt work
Good intentions horrible performance After just 3 searchs it doesn t work because Im a bot apparently
Comm ent
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Service has become as sh1tty as the rest
Service has become as sh1tty as the rest of search engines out there Regularly internal server error follower access not allowed server time out whatever No website surfing without regular refreshing even with simple pages like wikipedia Since a few months after few searches this appears for hours Just checking Settings Support Mail We apologize for the inconvenience to prevent possible abuse of the Startpage com service your Internet connection has been prevented from accessing it at this time This happens when a large number of search requests are received from one s Internet connection in a short amount of time -- for example if you are using screen-scraping software or if you are sharing a connection with many people perhaps through a proxy service Otherwise if you have received this message in error please help us in investigation by providing following information - Are you using TOR or other anonymous proxies - Do you have special browser configuration or extensions - Are you using VPN - Are you using a company network We will seek to refine and correct this whenever possible Thank you for your patience Email optional Description
Anon Sama
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Unfortunately now totally unusable
I am truly sorry to have to write this I only hope it can be a wake up call This is now an impossible search engine to use It used to be the best alternative to Google then it started effectively blocking searches through VPNs or Tor with it s overly aggressive DDoS protection Finally now I am getting the DDoS protection block page on my home connection That s right my home ISP provided IP address from which I do not have any WAN facing services I am not a stupid consumer there is no botnet in my things I built and update my router with free and open source software I don t use IoT unless I made it There was NO good reason for that detection to occur If this isn t intentional i e sabotage by competitors self-sabotage because of external financial interests and it s seeming increasingly more so it s staggering incompetence Regardless something is going very wrong Everyone knows about the issue Startpage surely knows about the issue The issue is getting worse and not better It is a simply unusable search engine as of now Brave search is my recommendation for now Genuinely sad and confusing to see this search engine kill itself
Jan
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
When i first heard about the project
When i first heard about the project i got all hyped up Webpage that stores no cookies But when i tryed to use it from now 4 different devices on differents networks always the same time-wasting page Some security questions and captcha I AM NOT DOING THAT FOR A SINGLE SEARCH Your project is fail and is doomed to fail with such a way to aproach things
Hape De
6736 reviews
N/A
1 year ago
Startpage became UNUSEFUL
Startpage became UNUSEFUL I am NOT using a proxy or VPN but do access the Internet via a huge Internetprovider Neveretheless in 80 of the search requests I receive We apologize for the inconvenience to prevent possible abuse of the Startpage com service your Internet connection has been prevented from accessing it at this time IT IS ENOUGH NOW - I will remove Startpage as standard search engine from my browser
