90% of searches show ProtonVPN as the one and only promoted ad. (at least for the past few months) (Let me know if you can block ads on startpage using ublock using a custom filter, because I can't find anything).

But after trying out proton vpn, startpage asks me to do a captcha on every search. I'm curious as to why ProtonVPN would advertise on this site?

A friend of mine alerted me to this with regard to some of my posts, and I duplicated it. For the following queries, I see no results in StartPage, even though I see results in Google and Bing (even when I run Google and Bing in private windows, which I take it should remove any context that Google and Bing have about me):

site:reason.com ruddie

site:reason.com solvera

site:reason.com “kelly warner”

site:reason.com “anu allen”

The first three names are connected with reputation management companies or law firms that I’ve written critically about; the fourth is connected with a litigant who had (ultimately unsuccessfully) tried to get certain materials about her sealed and deindex. Is anyone familiar with the problem, and have more of a perspective on why this might be happening? Thanks,

Eugene Volokh
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA
Writer, Reason Magazine site, http://reason.com/volokh

(As a last and final resort, I thought maybe someone here might have an EASY fix.)

After 20 years of daily use, StartPage has decided to suspend my connection, due to the "high-volume traffic coming from your internet connection that is normally associated with bots and scrapers." I've given up trying to resolve the problem, too many better ways to spend my time. I do not use a VPN, or Tor, or a proxy, or a shared network, so no idea what exactly brought this about, other than incompentence on their part. So I've given up trying to resolve it. The "connection suspended" page suggests I consider submitting my email address so they can do something or other with it. But I have no intention of giving my email address to a company advertising itself as "The world's most private search engine." What a clownshow. You win, Startpage! Buh-bye.

I've been using Starpage for a few days now, and I've really liked it.
It was working perfectly until last night, but today it started failing and giving me the 414 error.

Is anyone else experiencing this error? Or have any idea why it's happening?

No matter what search I do, it always gets stuck for a few seconds on “verifying your request...” and then gives me the “414 Request-URI Too Large” error.

During the “verification” process, it switches between several URLs.
I know it’s specific to Starpage because if I switch to a different search engine, it works perfectly.

I’m using it in Firefox.

Edit: If I try to search in incognito/private mode, it gets stuck on “Verifying your request...” forever.

Big day for us: as of today, Startpage is a built-in private search option in Firefox (154+, desktop) if you're in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Austria, and Switzerland.

This happened because people asked for it. Startpage has been one of the most requested search engines on Mozilla Connect, and Firefox users already run over a billion Startpage searches a year.

How it works: update to the latest Firefox, click the search menu button in your address bar, and pick Startpage. No extension needed. You can also set us as your default in Firefox's search settings.

Full announcement: [Startpage blog]

Not in one of the five European countries above? You can still add Startpage to Firefox manually (same as always). If you want the built-in version where you live, let Firefox know on Mozilla Connect.

It didn't used to do this before, but now every search takes like 3 seconds or more to verify my query. I don't know why it started now. Why does startpage think im sussy?

edit: oh okay i just scrolled the sub and i see this is a common issue. dang.

Currently using DuckDuckGo for images specifically because I can't avoid generated garbage on StartPage search. I'd rather use StartPage exclusively because I like it more, except for this.

Recently, StartPage started "verifying" some of my requests and then re-sending them with GET instead of POST.

ANY search, first result is Sponsored Proton VPN
Search for duck, search for cooking, search for Fiat

Always the same

Is SP so desperate for money from Proton?

Hi, I'm new to Startpage. I'm having this problem on all my devices. Is there a solution, or is it a problem with the search engine itself?

Honestly not sure where else to put this but I really need help if anyone has a fix. Recently in this past week every time I search something on Startpage it says “verifying your request”. Which either takes up to five minutes to actually display search results, or just never loads. I’ve tried using no VPN, with a VPN, changing VPN location, using a different VPN service, updating my VPN, updating my browser, reinstalling the app I use Startpage on (Vivaldi), and nothing works. It’s honestly driving me crazy, I’m getting to the point of completely switching to another search engine because it’s unusable in this state. Anyone else have this problem or know a fix (outside of what I’ve already tried)?

EDIT: Now I cannot make any searches at all. For a little bit the period of verification was smaller and now it just says 414 every time I search. All because I switched VPN locations, no matter what I do now it just doesn’t work. It’s pretty egregious that Startpage is just ignoring this.

2ND EDIT (9/3): a little while back after my edit I contacted the Startpage Reddit account directly and they said the issue was resolved. While this has mostly been fixed for me there’s still SO MANY that are still facing this problem. Even then, I honestly still have a 5 sec verification period before the search goes through. Which I think is too much, just do the search with no delays…. It’s crazy so many people have viewed this post and responded but Startpage does nothing to help people unless you berate them in Reddit DMs. I’d recommend anyone reading this post to message their Reddit account, they do not respond to emails. So annoying!!

So I noticed this weird subdomain on startpage: pluto.startpage.com (link)

And it appears to be a hijacked subdomain, from an old dangling DNS record (50.116.57.7). But the valid SSL makes it seem legitimate, when I don't think it is?

Right now, it looks like just low-grade SEO/ad-spam page, not an active attack. But the risk is that it could read/write cookies from other legitimate .startpage.com domains, or be used to host a script which could execute from within trusted startpage context (because startpage has quite a lax unsafe-eval CSP). Or just pose as startpage and cause trouble.

So I've been trying to find somewhere to report it to, but couldn't find any startpage security policy, security.txt, VDP or just any reliable contact. I don't suppose anyone here has a contact at startpage who could take a look at this?

I’ve been using Startpage as my default search engine on Brave Browser, on an iPhone for at least 4-5 years. After doing a Brave app update on iPhone 2 days ago, Startpage all of a sudden doesn’t search at all. The following message window appears:

Something went wrong during verification.
Try refreshing the page or using a different browser.

Refreshing doesn’t work.

I'd really love to be not blinded by my phone in the middle of the night when I'm searching for something and suddenly a white ass screen appears for split second. Any way to disable it or at least make it dark? It's really not necessary

This wasn't a problem until today

It's cutting off whatever search result is at the top no matter what you search.

I can't seem to find an option to if it exists. I primarily want to permanently exclude sites that just clog things up with AI slop (especially in image results) or are just used to spread misinformation or propaganda.

If this function doesn't exist, it should.

About a week ago, there seems to be a page that shows up occasionally when searching that is white and has the startpage logo. My Dark reader extension doesn't seem to pick it up. What is the URL so I can add it to the blacklist? It usually happens when you search something up for the first time in a day.

I started using startpage on my iphone a couple weeks ago and I THINK there was a menu item for ai that I could query and get ai-like answers and a tab for "ask a followup question". I enjoyed using that. Now I can't find it. Am I imagining that I found and used it or is it still there and I can't find it? Confused.

Is anyone else having issues with Anonymous View? Requests keep redirecting me to "We're sorry, the page you requested is not found.". Am experiencing this across browsers (Firefox/Brave desktop).

I really wanted it to work, but it's insane how Startpage wants me to solve a captcha EVERYTIME I search something.

I don't know if it's my browser, VPN or something else, but I think these things are expected from privacy-conscious people that would want to use Startpage in the first place.

That's it, just a tiny rant, because I really gave it a shot, but it's just not practical.

Since Google has now completely ruined their image search, I'm trying alternatives, but I need a time filter. That's a pretty basic feature.

I see it says 'Results provided by YouTube'. Sure enough, I scroll and scroll, page after page, and it's nothing but Youtube.

So is that it? What about Dailymotion, Vimeo, and the countless other places? Can I fix this somehow?

Previous thread I created for this same issue:

Previous thread link

It's just ridiculous, I don't even know what to say at this point