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I
remember back in the early history of cyberspace when Yahoo! was
all the rage as a search engine. Google didn't even
exist or was just starting.
Now
Yahoo! is an after thought and Google is the main search
engine. Sure there are others like Bing and a multitude of
other two bit services, but almost all of them share the same
problem...
Data
Mining.
It
seems that wherever you go, whatever you do, you are being
tracked and your visits recorded for
perpetuity. I'm not even talking about
searching for things that are in violation of the
law. I'm talking about things that could be
potentially embarrassing for you if you were to apply for a job
and the Human Resource Department of that company is up to date
on how to search your background.
Maybe
you don't want to it known you visit fratpad or other gay
pornographic sites. Maybe you have a political
affiliation that someone might find offensive or that you don't
want anyone to know about.
Search
engines routinely save your searches and do so for different
lengths of time - some do it for perpetuity. Supposedly
the data is identification stripped - that means they have
aggregate data on what is popular and what isn't and where
people in different regions are going - but, with Google
expanding its operations into being more than just a search
engine, they can target (and do) you for specific advertising
based upon your search results. In many ways,
for example, Google is no longer a search engine - it is a data
collection service that is designed to enhance its ability to
sell data to third parties.
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Because
I have a tendency to be a free spirit and to express my views on a
wide range of subjects that include not so flattering opinions of
this current Administration, I have sought out alternatives to the
big search engines - to find new search avenues that don't store
my data on where I go.
There
is no completely safe way to travel through cyberspace so all you
can do is to minimize the easily accessible methods of searching
for items. Perhaps in the future I can cover in more
detail how you can protect your overall footprint you leave to
minimize third parties knowing what you are doing. As
this article is only on search engines, I wanted to provide you
with two that I know of that are safer to use than Google.
If you
know of better alternatives or want to add to this list, just
leave a comment and I'll follow up and add to this list below as
appropriate!
SAFER
SEARCH ENGINES
- Startpage
- Duck
Duck Go
(thanks Chaz)
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