In June this year the privacy landscape became a political and social minefield: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden disclosed that companies such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook and Twitter were being forced to secretly give the United States government metadata on their users, including users unique device IP addresses, the keywords they search for, and the sites they visit.

The revelation provoked Florida entrepreneur Jeffrey Sisk to action and he founded Zeekly.com, a worldwide search engine that protects privacy.

The site circumvents the issue by not storing metadata on its users, and with no historical data on Zeekly users, there is no information to hand over should the Government request it. In addition, the search engine runs on 2048-bit SSL encryption, a high-grade SSL encryption that ensures users’ internet provider and/or cell phone company cannot record user data.

In a recent interview Sisk stated, “Many of us rely on the internet for many things. We find information, solve problems, pursue our interests, read news, make purchases, and socially connect with like-minded people around the world. This is highly personal information. Granting access to American spy agencies to this level of information on American citizens is the most egregious assault on our constitutional rights regarding illegal search and seizure in the history of our country. As one of the original authors of the Patriot Act recently put it, they never intended the law to be used to collect mass amounts of data on unsuspecting American citizens. I think most of us already knew this was going on to some extent, but clearly this has far exceeded the original boundaries set forth by Congress.”

Knowing users around the world use American search engines, Zeekly has been programmed to allow users to search the web worldwide, or to narrow searches down to their home country only. The site also provides a translation feature to the language of your choice. Additionally, in contrast to other privacy search engines, Zeekly says it is building its own proprietary web indexes (based on hadoop/hypertable used by tech giants such as Google), and the site is focused on bringing superior search results to its users in addition to protecting their privacy. “This makes Zeekly truly unique in the market,” says the press release.

Sisk added, “New internet companies are finally coming forward with products and services that value your privacy. Americans and users around the world now have a choice, and based on the explosive growth of Zeekly they are clearly stating that privacy is a high priority issue. This obviously makes some of the established search engines and websites very vulnerable until they either voluntarily choose to stop collecting this data, or laws are changed which prevent its collection by government agencies.

“Zeekly will leverage this opportunity and become a market leader in the search space because we provide high-quality search results, and we are committed to protecting the privacy of our users.”