Five search engines that respect your privacy

**chowur** · 2012-05-09 14:51

Google, Bing, Yahoo – all the major search engines track your search history and build profiles on you, serving different results based on your search history. Try one of these alternative search engines if you’re tired of being tracked.

You can read the rest ofthe article here;http://www.howtogeek.com/113513/5-al...ampaign=090512

**CLiNT** · 2012-05-09 16:51

What exactly is the "personally identifiable information"?

**satrow** · 2012-05-09 17:17

Originally Posted by CLiNT

What exactly is the "personally identifiable information"?

I assume you're referring to the first paragraph of the DuckDuckgo review Clint, if you follow the link to their privacy policy page: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html you'll see the first thing they mention is "HTTP referrer header":

At other search engines, when you do a search and then click on a link, your search terms are sent to that site you clicked on (in the HTTP referrer header). We call this sharing of personal information "search leakage." At other search engines, when you do a search and then click on a link, your search terms are sent to that site you clicked on (in the HTTP referrer header). We call this sharing of personal information "search leakage."

Now slap on your moderators hat and look at my http headers in the site CP.

Personally identifiable? Yes, at this moment, there are only 2-5 other users worldwide that might have a similar header to mine.

If you have a free evening and an interest in learning how it all works, that review makes a pretty good starting point.

**CLiNT** · 2012-05-09 18:42

Thanks, I had a better look. The site purports not to store IP addresses and User Agent data.

I'll give it my thumbs up.
1.jpg Untitled.jpg

I'll start using it for a while and see what the quality of the search is relative to Google.

**satrow** · 2012-05-09 19:12

I've been using DuckDuckGo as my #1 search engine for a few months now, mainly for computer troubleshooting purposes. As such, many of my search queries consist of just a driver or file name. In Google, the results are littered with hits (sometimes the top 2 pages are full of them) from websites that exist only to sell crapware; in DDG, these are much lower in the rankings, if they exist at all. DDG results look 'cleaner'.

It's worth giving it a month or two trial; to get the same results directly from Google, simply add g! to the beginning of the search string and hit enter, you'll be redirected to the Google encrypted search results for that string: https://encrypted.google.com

**cloudsandskye** · 2012-05-14 14:43

I've tried all of these over the past several months and my favorite is Startpage. Great advanced search page and some nice customizable settings ( https://www.startpage.com/eng/advanced-search.html). Their sister product, Ixquick, is also very good (https://www.ixquick.com/eng/advanced-search.html).

**Hawk** · 2012-05-17 08:36

I'll add my thumbs-up for DuckDuckGo and Startpage both. I use DuckDuckGo for general searches and Startage for image searches.

**newdeal** · 2012-05-17 11:40

I may be missing the point here, and the sites listed may be good, but why change your favorite search pages when you can block their tracking habits? Go to Abine.com for their free blocking software, DNT+. It doesn't matter where you go, this will protect your privacy. To date I have had 10, 568 attempts to track me and not one was successful.
http://www.donottrackplus.com/link.p...=5829&ov=2.0.8
Works for me.

**RussB** · 2012-05-17 11:45

Originally Posted by cloudsandskye

I've tried all of these over the past several months and my favorite is Startpage. Great advanced search page and some nice customizable settings ( https://www.startpage.com/eng/advanced-search.html). Their sister product, Ixquick, is also very good (https://www.ixquick.com/eng/advanced-search.html).

+1 for "StartPage"

**ANZAC** · 2012-05-17 13:12

http://pcper.com/news/General-Tech/G...national-Users

the g! was a hot tip thank you! Stops MITM (man in the middle attacks)

**Hawk** · 2012-05-17 13:44

Originally Posted by newdeal

I may be missing the point here, and the sites listed may be good, but why change your favorite search pages when you can block their tracking habits? Go to Abine.com for their free blocking software, DNT+. It doesn't matter where you go, this will protect your privacy. To date I have had 10, 568 attempts to track me and not one was successful.
http://www.donottrackplus.com/link.p...=5829&ov=2.0.8
Works for me.

This is more about search engines logging every search you do, then selling that info.
This isn't about websites tracking you.

DoNoTrack may very well work great to block some sites from tracking you (it won't block every site though) but it won't stop search engines from logging your search info and IP address.

**Xircal** · 2012-05-23 13:45

Why the all hysteria about being tracked by search engines? Or some site knowing your IP address? The latter doesn't identify you personally, only the country and city/town you happen to live in.

Provided you don't use Internet Explorer, you can easily install an add-on to block ads appearing on the page, so what's all the excitement about?

I use Firefox and have Adblock Plus installed. The latter has the added advantage of filtering malware domains (scroll down to the "Miscellaneous" section at the foot of the apge and subscribe there) so that I won't inadvertently land on one of those while I'm wandering around the web.

If you do happen to be paranoid though, all you need is to use Tor which will hide your IP for you: https://www.torproject.org/index.html.en

EDIT: Almost forget: in Firefox, you can disable the http referrer header

**CLiNT** · 2012-05-23 15:29

There is no hysteria, it's just another optional search engine. No big deal.
If you like it, use it. If you don't like it, then continue using whatever is working for you.

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