DuckDuckGo’s main page. Click to enlarge.
Posted on 06/17/2013 7:01:42 AM PDT by ShadowAce
While helping our colleague Dave Bean as he worked to get his essay on Google and the NSA ready for publication, I found myself wondering if any of this latest news on the government’s forcing their nose into everybody-in-the-world’s business would have any lasting effect. Sadly, I figured not–if there was any change, it’d only be temporary. I’ve spent too many years on this planet to expect too much in the way of permanent change for the better.
DuckDuckGo’s main page. Click to enlarge.
A little hope came to shine on me, however.
The other night, just as Dave and I were engaged in a back-and-forth exchange of emails about his essay, I received an email, sent from my little sister’s Yahoo account. She wanted to know if I knew a better way for her to search than Google?
“One that doesn’t track you,” she wrote. “I know it’s silly and I don’t really care what they find about me, but I just don’t think they have the right to do that.”
I knew exactly what she meant. In the old days we would’ve said, “It’s the principle of the thing.”
Truth be told, the question was embarrassing for a supposed free tech expert like me. I didn’t. I knew search existed that didn’t track, but I’m as lazy as the next gal and Google’s too easy. I shot her an email back. “No,” I wrote, “but that’s a great idea for an article for FOSS Force. I’ll get right on it and get right back atcha.”
She’d prefer something with an Android app. My sister lives in the mountains, off the grid, out on the west coast. They have some electricity they generate from a stream on their property, but for Internet access they’re stuck with the snail paced service they can get from the one cell tower that sends a signal where they can reach it, so she pretty much depends on her Android phone and the Google Nexus tablet she’s come to adore.
I did a cursory search and was amazed at how easy it was to come up with search engines that don’t keep records or track their users. One of them, DuckDuckGo, I’d forgotten but had played around with it some time back and knew it had a good reputation among people I know in the San Francisco bay area.
Search results displayed on ixquick search engine. Click to enlarge.
Just today Business Insider ran an article on all the extra traffic going to DuckDuckGo since the news of PRISM came out. They’re setting records.
Search results seem to be at least as good as on Google, since all of these alternative search engines take results from the major search engines, including Google and Bing. They’re free services. Like Google, they include ads in their search results. But these ads are based only on your search terms, not on your surfing history.
Later that same night, I fired-off another email to little sis. “Try DuckDuckGo or Ixquick,” I told her. “Neither one tracks you. Both have Android apps.”
A little while later, sister sends an email back. “Thanks,” she wrote. “BTW, I have a new email addy.”
She dropped Yahoo. The new TOS gives them the right to scan through your mail looking for keywords and keyword phrases. Now she’s with Hushmail, an online email service that doesn’t read your mail.
otherwise.
The best expose on PRISM now comes from the 40 year career NSA employee, William Benny, who became the Director of Intelligence there under Geroge W. Bush. He has gone public since Snowden and detailed the full capabilities of PRISM and what the NSA was doing.
Former Director of NSA Intelligence reveals the full extent of PRISM capabilities. MUST SEE!
Looks like https://ixquick.com isn’t Google enhanced which I like. Same format though.
Someone once made a remark about Pat Buchanan that stuck with me, because it’s really not about Buchanan, but a philosophy of behavior.
“Pat Buchanan is the kind of guy that, if you injected him with Sodium Pentothol, he would say exactly the same things.”
In practical terms, this means that you should have a public face and a private face. What you say and do in public, or over electronic media, should always be made with the assumption that anyone and everyone will be reading it. Zero privacy. There is and never will be a way around this problem.
There is no privacy on the Internet. Assume this.
It is much like the elementary school rule that “You should never take anything to school that you are afraid of losing. Everything you take should be replaceable and expendable.”
And while everybody also has a private face, of things you don’t want to share with others, this means *always*. If you want to keep them private, do not share them.
Many families have one member who is a gossip. They will tell complete strangers anything they know about you, with utter disregard to your privacy. And they will also frequently ask you to give them private information just so they can abuse it.
Many corporations and government agencies are this way as well. They are always after private information to add to their files and exploit. To the point where there is some truth to the statement, that “Nobody wants to know anything about you, for *your* benefit.”
Today, there are so many government(s) and commercial interests after your information, that it is a wonder the Internet still functions. If 100 wiretaps are on your phone, eventually you can’t speak to or hear who you want to talk to on the other side.
However, beyond a certain point, the information collection becomes foolish.
A great example of this was when Clinton’s office in the White House accumulated the crude and unverified FBI files of hundreds of his political opponents. Vast, thick dossiers loaded with rumor, innuendo and guesswork, with no distinction of what was accurate and what was not.
The childish glee of voyeuristically doing so, in a close to perverse way, was great, but the actual value was minimal. Manufactured lying gossip would have been just as useful to politically attack or threaten, the purpose of the exercise.
So, since we cannot speak publicly of private things, what can we as individuals do? Simple. Increase the amount of garbage that the snoops collect.
http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/
This is a random (plausible) identity generator. When a website (that you are not buying something from) asks for personal information; or if you are “required” to submit personal information just to comment on a news or opinion item; give them a fake. They have no “need to know”.
And, if they demand an email address, give them a “10 minute email”, a real email account that only lasts for 10 (renewable) minutes:
http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html
Or, if you need to get several responses from them, use a spamgourmet address, which will forward to your real email a limited number of emails, then block the rest.
People tend to reuse passwords, which is noted by the surveyors, so use a password generator, such as:
http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/
Importantly, it lets you generate up to 64 characters, so if you can, use a 30-64 character password, which will be much, much harder to crack. Just for fun. Make them work for it. Especially on frivolous sites.
Importantly, if you assign a fake name to your real address because they are snail mailing something to you, keep a list record of fake names that you used, so when somebody else sends junk mail to your address, using the fake name, you will know who sold your information.
So don’t trust them as much in the future.
I don’t know, but what I got from reading the first two paragraphs is that they would be for it.
What an ass abyss author. No hits from me for the author.
http:/www.duckduckgo.com
BookBump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
