We like Scroogle. www.scroogle.org has all the benefits of Google with none of the privacy issues…. Please note, we are not endorsing scroogle[dot]com in any way.
Also check out Google Sharing.
Erasing David
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Love the site, and most of your advice — but I disagree with this one.
There are plenty of ways to use search engines through proxies to protect your privacy, but that is not what Scroogle is for. Scroogle was created by infamous net-loon Daniel Brandt to enable people to use Google whilst damaging their business model by stripping out the ads. Why would Brandt do this? Because he is undertaking a surprisingly successful one-man vendetta / smear campaign against Google for the heinous crime of refusing to rank his business’s web site higher. (He also has a vendetta against Wikipedia, as it happens.)
And what does his business consist of, pray tell? Why, collecting and selling personal data …
Comment by Roger — May 14, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
Thanks for this Roger – I am looking into it now and will remove the Scroogle recommendation if you are right (I’m sure you are). Could you recommend an easy way to use e.g. Google through a proxy for people reading this site? I’ll check that out too and post it, if you could. Much appreciated.
Comment by David Bond — May 14, 2010 @ 2:00 pm
@David:
I’m afraid I can’t offer a solution that is both very simple for a non-technical person to implement, and also bomb-proof. Here are a few suggestions that might help:
1. Microsoft Internet Explorer is the least user-friendly browser for those who are trying to protect their privacy.
2. For those using Firefox, get the NoScript and CookieSafe extensions.
3. Ixquick is a meta-search engine with one of the best privacy policies around. (It is still far from perfect, though, just a little better than the rest. I don’t use it myself; I think my other techniques obviate its advantages.)
4. No matter what else you do, always refuse “third party cookies.” A third party cookie is a cookie set by a content provider that did not serve the main page you are looking at, but only added some content to the page. The most common third party content is a banner ad. Because the same ad network sends banner ads to many different sites, they get to set (and inspect) cookies from you at many different sites, and thus can track your behaviour, in detail, in real time. Not only is this far more information than anyone like Google can collect, but many of these networks have no real privacy policy at all, and some have links to crooks. This is very, very bad if you care about your privacy. Better browsers allow third party cookies to be refused through a simple preferences setting, without affecting any other cookie behaviour.
5. Consider setting your browser to delete all cookies on browser shut-down. This prevents long term data aggregation. Personally I have found that refusing all cookies outright can become a pain in the behind, but deleting them afterwards rarely causes any issues. (This is because websites have to be designed on the assumption that an account holder may access the sight from a new machine.)
6. Ask your ISP about configuring your browser to surf the web through their proxy server. Ask them if it can be made “anonymising”. A web proxy aggregates the web surfing of many, many people, making it much harder to track them individually. It does this for *everything*, not just search engines, which is really excellent. However, most proxies still leave some clues that can allow your original address to be reconstructed, assuming the snoop cares that much; anonymising proxies strip out as much trackable information as possible. If your ISP does not have an anonymising proxy, you can find lists of them by Googling (!!irony!!), and set them up the same way your ISP told you to configure their proxy.
7. Having dealt with several forms of regular tracking, you also need to deal with Flash cookies, if you allow Flash to run (and nearly everyone does, if you use YouTube for example.) Flash cookies work just like regular cookies except that access is configured in a totally different way. To access the Flash control panels, click here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html
8. Finally, and most importantly: be very careful what personal information you enter onto a web application. This is a genie that won’t go back into its bottle. If someone on your social networking site sends you a game that asks you to enter your mother’s maiden name, when you are going to be away on vacation, or other personally sensitive information, ask yourself: “Isn’t this a really dumb idea? Who else is going to be able to access this? Do I even know?”
Comment by Roger — May 17, 2010 @ 12:54 pm
Roger, regardless of Scroogle’s motives, the fact remains that it’s a very handy service, ‘endorsed’ by Indymedia (https://www.indymedia.org.uk/) which uses Scroogle as a site search engine. Unless the Scroogle owner is lying – not impossible, of course – then the engine doesn’t store cookies or track IPs, which is a major advance over Google. There have been plenty of recent news stories about ‘terror’ trials where the defendant’s search history has been used in evidence against him/her, and that search history can only have come from Google – by using Scroogle as a proxy you are denying Google that information. I also use Scroogle SSL if I want to carry out searches which I don’t want my ISP or employer to log.
Of course, you still have to maintain Net ‘hygiene’ and be paranoid about what you leave behind, and your points in the last message are valid. Firefox and Safari now have private browsing facilities, and allow deletion (but not erasure) of history, cache and cookies. The freeware tool CCleaner (Scroogle it) is a very handy Windows utility which allows you to set, in its options, secure file erasure via wiping.
Another useful tip is to use Firefox with the Web Developer add-on, as although aimed at techies has useful disabling features for ordinary users, including turning off Java, Javascript and cookies.
And finally, for paranoid security but slow browsing, install Tor (torproject.org).
Comment by Gerry — May 27, 2010 @ 7:21 pm
Thanks Gerry. As you see I’ve kept the Scroogle link up. On balance I agree with your Gerry that it is a good service. I like the simplicity of it – and the cheekiness (you’re using Google but not giving them the data they want). I do appreciate Roger’s comments though and they stand as a great warning that there is no perfect solution and everyone’s motives must be examined! David
Comment by David Bond — May 28, 2010 @ 2:37 pm
Scroogle isn’t loaded with adds and B.S. like Google searches.
Comment by Buk — July 2, 2010 @ 6:19 pm