Search Engines with Privacy!
Sep. 12, 2018
Discovering what someone is searching for on the web can show a lot of information about them… Whether it be about their medical issues, financial situation, personal issues, or anything that comes to their mind. It will be searched, and in most cases it will be documented by someone. There are company’s out there that are making insane amounts of revenue from data packages that were collected on people. For example: Google has stated that they track things that you type into the search bar even if you don’t press “Enter.” Your searches are literally mined, tracked, and packaged up for advertisements to be displayed on web pages you visit. Just last year google made 95.38 billion dollars from ad revenue. While this can help bring you better search results when you need to find something useful when searching. I believe that it can be dangerous to have that much information on someone and recommend that you use an alternative search solution that won’t book your inquiries down to the highest bidder.
Search Engines I mostly use:
DuckDuckGo - “The Search Engine that doesn’t track you”
DuckDuckGo will not store any information that will identify you, however, they do store searches. I mainly use this search engine because it tends to retrieve results faster than the ones listed below in my opinion.
Startpage - “We don’t track you. We don’t profile you. Period”
Startpage is based out of the Netherlands and will only comply with government requests if they have to… however, they don’t record your IP address, your searches, and don’t serve tracking or identifying cookies.
Honorable Mentions:
Search Encrypt - “Keep your searches private.”
Search Encrypt uses local encryption before going out to the web. Your search terms will then expire after you are finished searching. It wouldn’t even matter if someone grabbed your actual computer to take a look. They’ll prevent your ISP from eavesdropping. It won’t share your personal info. It won’t access your online accounts. They don’t even retain server logs.
SearxNG - “Privacy-Preserving Metasearch Engine”
SearxNG is a privacy-preserving metasearch engine that aggregates search results from various sources without storing user data. It prioritizes user privacy by not tracking or storing any personal information, ensuring a secure and anonymous search experience.