TMCnet News
Blocking Big Brother [Florida Trend](Florida Trend Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) When Jeffrey Sisk learned last summer in the wake of the Edward Snowden scandal that the federal government was getting easy access to the internet activity of Americans, his first reaction was anger. "To me, this is probably the biggest violation of our liberties as Americans that has happened since the founding of our country," says the Citrus County resident. "I was so mortified that our search data was ending up in a government computer that I had to do something about it." The serial entrepreneur turned his anger into a business - a search engine called Zeekly.com. that, unlike Google and many other search engines, does not store the metadata of its users. If the government comes calling for a user's search history, Zeekly can't comply because its server doesn't keep the data. The site, which is still less than a year old and gets revenue from selling ads, is getting about 2 million page views a week. Zeekly is among a group of privacy-oriented search engines that have been aided by Snowden's revelations. The largest, DuckDuckGo.com, gets more than 4 million visitors a day - nearly four times more visitors than it had a year ago. Sisk, 50, who also created PhysicianWork, a job site for doctors, is working on a deal, which he says he'll announce later this year, that he says will elevate the site from a "labor of love" to "a very serious player in the search space." (c) 2014 Trend Magazine, Inc. |