I suggest a Firefox addon called "start page" by ixquick.
Freeper geeks submit your suggestions...
A suggestion https://startpage.com/eng/?
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Thank you for this. Too many of the big names in the tech business are dominated by folks with faulty moral compasses. It’s disturbing.
Agree on IXQuick.
Also use script and Javascript blockers such as NoScript for Firefox to ensure that all Google-based scripts and services are turned off.
When in doubt, download and use Tor as a browser. The Internet is an interesting place when all of the scripts and crap are turned off.
Just use TOR, and dont log into google.
https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en
From their site:
By now, just about everybody has heard about the PRISM surveillance program, and many are beginning to speculate on its impact on Tor.
Unfortunately, there still are a lot of gaps to fill in terms of understanding what is really going on, especially in the face of conflicting information between the primary source material and Google, Facebook, and Apple’s claims of non-involvement.
This apparent conflict means that it is still hard to pin down exactly how the program impacts Tor, and is leading many to assume worst-case scenarios.
For example, some of the worst-case scenarios include the NSA using weaponized exploits to compromise datacenter equipment at these firms. Less severe, but still extremely worrying possibilities include issuing gag orders to mid or low-level datacenter staff to install backdoors or monitoring equipment without any interaction what-so-ever with the legal and executive staff of the firms themselves.
We’re going to save analysis of those speculative and invasive scenarios for when more information becomes available (though we may independently write a future blog post on the dangers of the government use of weaponized exploits).
For now, let’s review what Tor can do, what tools go well with Tor to give you defense-in-depth for your communications, and what work needs to be done so we can make it easier to protect communications from instances where the existing centralized communications infrastructure is compromised by the NSA, China, Iran, or by anyone else who manages to get ahold of the keys to the kingdom.
The core Tor software’s job is to conceal your identity from your recipient, and to conceal your recipient and your content from observers on your end. By itself, Tor does not protect the actual communications content once it leaves the Tor network. This can make it useful against some forms of metadata analysis, but this also means Tor is best used in combination with other tools.
Through the use of HTTPS-Everywhere in Tor Browser, in many cases we can protect your communications content where parts of the Tor network and/or your recipients’ infrastructure are compromised or under surveillance. The EFF has created an excellent interactive graphic to help illustrate and clarify these combined properties.
Through the use of combinations of additional software like TorBirdy and Enigmail, OTR, and Diaspora, Tor can also protect your communications content in cases where the communications infrastructure (Google/Facebook) is compromised.
However, the real interesting use cases for Tor in the face of dragnet surveillance like this is not that Tor can protect your gmail/facebook accounts from analysis (in fact, Tor could never really protect account usage metadata), but that Tor and hidden services are actually a key building block to build systems where it is no longer possible to go to a single party and obtain the full metadata, communications frequency, *or* contents.
Tor hidden services are arbitrary communications endpoints that are resistant to both metadata analysis and surveillance.
A simple (to deploy) example of a hidden service based mechanism to significantly hinder exactly this type of surveillance is an XMPP client that also ships with an XMPP server and a Tor hidden service. Such a P2P communication system (where the clients are themselves the servers) is both end-to-end secure, and does *not* have a single central server where metadata is available. This communication is private, pseudonymous, and does not have involve any single central party or intermediary.
More complex examples would include the use of Diaspora and other decentralized social network protocols with hidden service endpoints.
Despite these compelling use cases and powerful tool combination possibilities, the Tor Project is under no illusion that these more sophisticated configurations are easy, usable, or accessible by the general public.
We recognize that a lot of work needs to be done even for the basic tools like Tor Browser, TorBirdy, EnigMail, and OTR to work seamlessly and securely for most users, let alone complex combinations like XMPP or Diaspora with Hidden Services.
Additionally, hidden services themselves are in need of quite a bit of development assistance just to maintain their originally designed level of security, let alone scaling to support large numbers of endpoints.
Being an Open Source project with limited resources, we welcome contributions from the community to make any of this software work better with Tor, or to help improve the Tor software itself.
If you’re not a developer, but you would still like to help us succeed in our mission of securing the world’s communications, please donate! It is a rather big job, after all.
We will keep you updated as we learn more about the exact capabilities of this program.
I have to compromise. For personal searches, I will abandon bing and Google, but for work-related searches, there is no better search engine(s).
Anyone else recall that back during the Bush administration they asked Google what people were most commonly searching for on some topic (kiddie porn?), not who was searching, just what was being searched on, and the Googlianos indignantly replied “We will never divulge that information”, but when the 0bamans say “Jump”, the ask “How high?” on the way up?
Those are free.
If I use something for free, I can’t hardly complain about it.
What was the website that Glenn Beck mentioned the other day that sells a thumb-stick to surf from with software on it with no tractability?
I like dogpile. One advantage is that if you ever get hit with malware that redirects search engines, they usually only redirect google, yahoo, bing, etc. A smaller search engine like dogpile is usually unaffected, so you can use it to download removal tools.
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ping
I’ll stick with Google, thank you. Nothing to hide.
My head is just spinning. How is Snowdon a traitor? I'm sure every terrorist wannabee knew that the feds were watching communications. He was merely verifying the obvious.
Bflr
I’m just thinking...
...wouldn’t we bring more unwelcome attention to ourselves from spynet using browsers designed to be anonymous?
I think the final answer here is to overwhelm spynet with miss-information and harmless minutiae. Perhaps with a program that engages when our computers are static.
Just a thought...in the mean time seeker41 correct that Google should be hit in the pocketbook...by us voting with our feet.
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