I was going about my leisure as usual, which includes the occasional Net search and also includes the occasional disconnect from my sometimes-temperamental home wifi.

Then the wifi hiccuped, I reconnected and resent the search query I’d been in the middle of… and Startpage interpreted that as “high-volume traffic that is normally associated with bots and scrapers.”

So my “connection has been suspended”… but only when I’m using Waterfox on one specific machine. Different browser on the same machine, no block. Waterfox on two different machines on the same wifi router, no block.

How does that make sense?

How did Startpage’s algo mistake my resending one search query – an action so bog-standard it was suggested to me by the browser – for bot activity in the first place?

How many people has Startpage made this same mistake with? (I found half a dozen different user complaints scattered across browser and OS support forums and the Startpage subreddit in a matter of minutes…)

And how quickly will I find another default search engine if Startpage doesn’t unfuck itself in short order? It’s been two days, and I’ve already started making a list…