It may be time to switch to DuckDuckGo or Startpage for web search
News about the government surveillance system PRISM broke only a couple of days ago even though it appears to have been in use for years. Major tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook or Apple have reportedly been involved in the program. While it is not clear how each company is involved, newspapers like The Guardian report that the NSA had access to email, chat messages, video conferencing or file transfers.
The three companies that control a large part of the search engine traffic in most regions of the world are all involved, and while that makes up just a small part of online activities of most users, it is nevertheless an important one.
I mentioned yesterday that DuckDuckGo's traffic surged in the wake of PRISM and that other privacy focused search engines such as Startpage are likely seeing an uptick in user requests due to the revelation.
The creators of Startpage have published a PRISM related page on their domain that assures users that it was never a part of PRISM, and that it never send a single byte of traffic to the US government in its 14 years of existence.
It highlights how Startpage, and Ixquick, another search engine operated by the company, is different from US companies associated with PRISM:
- They do not store user data like the IP address and searches, and do not use tracking cookies.
- Startpage uses encrypted connections by default.
- The company is based in the Netherlands and not US.
- Stronger privacy rights in Europe.
The quality of search is important as well. A privacy-minded search engine that does not provide you with great or even good search results would not really be an alternative after all.
Startpage unlike DuckDuckGo uses Google's search results but filters them through a proxy so that you are not put in a bubble or receive personalized search results based on that. Basically, you get Google's search quality without the negative aspects of it.
What both search engines have in common is that they value the privacy of their users. I suggest you give both a try to see which one you like better. Or maybe, you will end up using both, who knows.
Adding the search engine to your web browser
Some Startpage specific features
- You can view results using a proxy instead of making a direct connection to the website. This is great if the site is blocked, and also if you do not want to reveal your identity to the site you are connecting to.
- Preferences can be saved as a cookie or as a specially generated url to avoid using cookies.
- You can enable anonymous video and images searching in the preferences.
As I said earlier, search is just a small part of the equation, with email, chat, social networking sites and other forms of communication more in the focus than user searches. One has to start somewhere to make a difference though and search is definitely one of the easier things to change.
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Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.