Search engine DuckDuckGo saw a record number of searches this week, according to VentureBeat.

On Thursday, DuckDuckGo clocked 2.5 million search queries, a 33% increase over last Thursday. On Wednesday, users made 2.35 million search queries.

With news of the PRISM program, people seem to be becoming more skeptical of the services they use on the Internet, and how secure their information is.

DuckDuckGo doesn't track your clicks across the Web, unlike Google. So if the government were to come knocking on DuckDuckGo's doors, seeking information, they would have no way to tie that information to individual users.

But PRISM may not be totally responsible for DuckDuckGo's traffic spike. DuckDuckGo has recently appeared in major news publications, like the Washington Post, Bloomberg, and CNBC.

DuckDuckGo launched back in 2008 as an alternative to traditional search engines that don't respect your privacy. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg has mostly bootstrapped DuckDuckGo, but he also received $3 million from Union Square Ventures, Scott Banister, Peter Hershberg, Joshua Stylman, Joshua Schachter, Kal Vepuri, and Jim Young.