Search Google Anonymously
Privacy should be a major concern for everyone on the Internet these days. You would be surprised what search engines such as Google know about you - well, not really about you unless you have a real name account with them and are logged in when performing searches.
Have you ever searched for something personal on Google? A disease for instance, work or religion related searches? There is an easy way to search Google anonymously though which I will describe shortly only. There is nothing wrong in searching for general stuff without hiding your IP and identity but when it comes to personal information that are part of the search you should use an anonymizer to make sure this information is not stored in Google's databases.
Googlonymous is basically a frontend for a Google search that replaces your IP with the one from their server which means that Google will never have access to your IP. Even more interesting in my opinion is the two hour long video which can be watched on the site detailing the dangers of data mining.
Update: The service is no longer available. The website has been taken offline. Users have two options. They can first use a proxy server for their Google searches, or switch to another search engine that promises better privacy than Google.
The search engine that I would recommend for this is DuckDuckgo. The company behind the search engine has publicly stated that they do not track users of their search engine, and that they do not personalize search results either.
User tracking is a hot topic right now with privacy organizations and some governments lobbying for better user protection on the Internet. Users can make the first step in this regard by switching search engines to those that value the rights of Internet users.
Update 2: Another interesting choice that you have is startpage. It is providing you with access to Google's search results but without all the tracking and personalization that is involved on the official website.
You can find out more about start page by clicking on the private or details link on the main Startpage website.
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What is pretty interesting about that site is that it provides you anonymity from google … and at the same time gathers information about you itself!!! Check out the 1-pixel link on that page; where does it lead? “A free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page or blog and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!” “Highly detailed Analysis of your last 500 pageloads”, “# Discover:
* what keywords visitors use to find your site
* your most popular pages
* links used to reach your site
* what countries your visitors come from
* how visitors navigate through your site
* ..and much more”
Pretty alarming, I’d say :D
Anyways, good job on the blog and thanks for keeping it going
Equivalent site : http://www.scroogle.org
There is easier way to do it – I personally block cookies from google.com and then they cant join my queries by cookie, and my IP changes automatically every 24h ;-)
thanks for this website, i have a problem with youtube it is blocked in my country, is thier any free software to help me open it.
@ HOMAID:
You should try PSIPHON to try to avoid blockade in your country: http://psiphon.civisec.org/
You will need a willing participant in a “non-censored” country.
STRANGER thank you a lot, it worked & thanks to you now i can open my favorite site youtube.