Posted on 01/28/2010 8:53:11 AM PST by Neoliberalnot
Who in the world knows as much about you and your private thoughts as Google?
That's the question Katherine Albrecht, radio talk-show host and spokeswoman for Startpage, a search engine that protects user privacy, is posing to American Internet surfers.
"It would blow people's minds if they knew how much information the big search engines have on the American public," she told WND. "In fact, their dossiers are so detailed they would probably be the envy of the KGB."
Google exposed in Joseph Farah's "Stop the Presses!" autographed only at WND's online store.
It happens every day, Albrecht explained. When an unfamiliar topic crosses people's minds, they often go straight to Google, Yahoo or Bing and enter key terms into those search engines. Every day, more than a billion searches for information are performed on Google alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Scroogle.org claims to remove your ID before you enter Google.
I agree with you and I’m happy to say, I’ve switched and thankful to startpage.
I’ve been saying this for years. I even tried alternate search engines....but they mostly suck.
I did the same thing and they do suck, but, this startpage is pretty good, I’m impressed.
BTW, did you know Firefox’s Ghostery shows Google Analytics running on the comments page of FR? Nosy so-and-so’s.
All FREEPERS should be using the search engine
STARTPAGE.COM
Go there and check it out now!
“They know everything, and with a couple of mouse clicks, they could find every single person in the country who observes Passover or attends a Catholic or Baptist church or who buys ammunition.”
Every single person? No, they can’t.
There’s a good point to be made here, but I’d take it with a grain of salt. The author is just plugging a book.
BTW, did you know Firefox’s Ghostery shows Google Analytics running on the comments page of FR? Nosy so-and-so’s.”
I did not know this but nothing surprises anymore. Thanks for the tip.
Ixquick and Startpage are the same outfit.
With due respect, I would think if illiterate criminals can steal your personal identity, this scenario is highly likely.
Google doesn’t have information you don’t give them. If you don’t use Google to search for “passover” on a machine that can be traced back to you they don’t know you’re interested in Passover. And of course if you DO search for “passover” on a machine that can be traced back to you a lot more places than just Google wind up knowing about it (most importantly your ISP, a key part of any tracing of computers).
People need to wrap their heads around the fact that the internet is a public place with a fairly high level of tracking. Anything you wouldn’t buy with a credit card you probably should search for on the internet with a traceable computer. Not with Google, not with Startpage, not with anything.
Because of Google’s practices I used AltaVista for a while until they turned into Yahoo.
Recently I switched back to Dogpile, and have been pretty happy with that. They at least run Christian supporting headers on their site from time to time.
As far as sharing search data with Fed’s, it would not surprise me if all of them do.
But I still totally mistrust Google,Yahoo and others.
The one thing ‘they’ never tell you about paranoia, is that it is a time-tested self preservation and survival mechanism that has made the difference between life and death.
“Citizen X”
Bukhanovsky (Max Von Sydow): To be a psychiatrist in this country (the Soviet Union) is to be an expert on paranoia, whether you meant to be or not.
...
Later, when crossing the railroad tracks, IIRC, he says,
“(In this country), the question is not if you are paranoid, it is if you are paranoid enough.”
"...there's good news. Startpage, and its European brand Ixquick,, are introducing a new search alternative that will protect and never store private information about its users. Startpage will launch its new proxy service tonight at 10 p.m. EST.
The proxy service allows users to search and surf the Web anonymously. With each Startpage search, the word "proxy" appears under each result. If a user clicks "proxy," they may view the result privately.
Startpage visits the selected website, retrieves the information and shows it to the user in a privacy-protected window. A private user's browser never interacts directly with the external website so the websites cannot capture or record personal data or load malware onto a private computer. Websites only see that a site in the Netherlands is visiting the website, she said. The search engine never records personal information, search data or IP addresses.
"Startpage doesn't have any information, so even if it was served with a subpoena or, like Google, if it got hacked, there would be no records to obtain because it doesn't keep any records," Albrecht explained.
I just added Startpage to my Firefox browser as my default search tool. I don't search the net often, but when I do, I'd prefer to do it privately, and not give some oligarchical media empire the means to compile a dossier on me.
Yes. I've been grrrring at that little irritation for some time now.
Yep! But lots more than that...also removes all the spam crap and cookies that google supports...Cleaner return lists..Return is faster due to only the stuff you are looking for being returned..
Been using (and supporting) Scroogle for years...
I think mostly we use the term ‘paranoia’ to refer to healthy suspicion and skepticism. It’s really intended to describe a disease state. We started doing it to be funny, but now it’s become a standard usage.
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