Search Engines
 

Just wondering what search engines you guys use. I’m trying to “unGoogle” myself because of their policy of brooming up all of our user data and handing it over to God knows who. I have been using Microsoft’s Bing search engine of late and it seems to do quite well for me, but Bing being a Microsoft product, I would not assume the most favorable privacy policy. Google of course dominates the search engine scene with a 75-80% share of the market, Bing only handling about 10-25% of the market. I read somewhere that DuckDuckGo is becoming more popular than ever. I love their policy of not collecting and handing out our search requests to the world as Google does, but when I tried it out a few years back it seemed pretty lame and of course would not cough up anywhere near the hits Google would on any particular search. I’m just really frustrated with search engines and social media handing over our data to whomever, but sometimes I think that in this internet age we live in, well, maybe there really isn’t a whole heck of a lot we can do about it. Maybe we should just accept the notion that once you “log on” you pretty much give up your privacy.

I’m using www.startpage.com
They claim it doesn’t track you, but who really knows ?
(It does say “enhanced by google” !)

Never heard of that one Borderdon, I’ll give it a whirl. Thanks.

I use the Duck and rarely the Startpage.
I just downloaded Pale Moon. Was recommended on Gizmos Freeware site which I trust. All volunteer computer geeks. Apparently, quite respected in the computer field.

Maybe get a VPN and install some privacy plugins and just use Google.

I don’t think Pale Moon works on Apple products Russell.

I'm switching to DDGo. I no longer want to support Google, as well as Facebook, the two biggest advertising companies in the world, that depend on mining and selling users data to sustain their business model.

This is complicated because all the popular platforms and plenty of services hold and share private data.

If you use a VPN it's not hard to lean what it is and end points. One of the security platforms I use alerts me to people using them. It's not rocket science to hire someone at a low wage and figure out the subnets they use. That data can then be used for good or bad.

You can't use a lot of products, do shopping, travel, and for a lot of people do task for payroll, banking, and health care without giving up private info.

Also it might be appropriate for some to rethink or know how different Microsoft is now than at other times in their history. Their huge cloud infrastructure for businesses, professional use and enterprise has to meet standards so you have decent or down right good privacy if you pay to use a product vs do the free model.

If you use Mozilla vs a commercial browser and synchronize your settings you let someone else store private information just as you do with other services.

On search engines, I've used Bing much more in the past few years and purposely keep it as the default for one of the two systems I use all day. There are a lot of times when I get better results if not different results.

Use search engines you like. If privacy is your concern stop payment on your Internet and telephony services. Only use Internet others' open connections where you'll have a chance at plausible deniability. Have fun keeping your mishmash of VPN services straight and don't forget the articles that could have you question using TOR.

DDG works pretty well.

If you’re using a free access search engine it’s safe to assume they are data mining you and your searching habits. Read the agreements.

I thought this might be of interest for this topic. Privacy aside, the Apple Map is much improved. I started using it more via Apple Watch. In December I repeated an international trip where it used to be useless and now asking my watch to do the navigation in the rather basic right hand drive rental car worked great.

https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-apple-mapkit-js/

The privacy topic never gets far from me and I just had to do our annual outside audit for security and privacy that is initiated by the CPA firm. Wow things have changed in 10+ years.

Been using DDG for quite some time and I find it to be good enough for me .

Knowing that Google shows me results they are paid to show me I've been using Bing for years.

Actually most search engines have paid advertising and like most Google clearly displays which are the the paid ad search results with the little "AD" box icon at the start or the result. As does Bing

So I was just thinking if you're concerned about privacy especially from "Big Brother" seems perhaps your username floating around the internet could be as potentially problematic as Google notifying Sweetwater you have been searching guitars on the internet !!!! Just a thought :D