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Private Search Engines


Sampei.Nihira

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Private Search Engines - The Ultimate Guide (2019) recently updated by Sven Taylor elects Startpage as the best private search engine.

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...Finding the best private search engine for your unique needs is a subjective process and there’s no one-size-fits-all, with many factors to consider. Ideally, a search engine would return great results while also respecting your privacy. Unfortunately, there is often a tradeoff here, so it really comes down to the user and what you determine works best for your situation.

That being said, Startpage earned the title of “best private search engine” for 2019, and we’ll explain why below....

 

https://restoreprivacy.com/private-search-engine/

 

Pale Moon default search engines do not include Startpage.
For those who want to add this search engine:

https://addons.palemoon.org/search-plugins/

With New Moon I choose to save my personal settings without a cookie.
I set the Homepage in New Moon via the Obfuscated URL

With I.E.8 it is not possible to use Startpage,I use DuckDuckGo.

Which Search Engine do you prefer?

Edited by Sampei.Nihira
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I can't really stand duck duck go and I use the whole Google ecosystem: Google as search engine, Gmail, Android, Google Assistant, Google Drive and so on. I mean, c'mon people, let's face it, Google is the best search engine available, it has many useful services and many of them are free. Yes, the fact that NSA and MI6 can access my data as easily as Thanos snaps his fingers does annoy me, but since I don't do anything wrong and those agencies are working to keep our country safe I say "it doesn't matter". As to my connection, I do use a VPN every time I visit Italy and I turn it off as soon as I go back to the UK.

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@FranceBB, you should consider Serpent 55 and the Multi-Account Containers extension. Force gmail, youtube, and the like into a "Google" container where you can sign in and stay signed in - but don't force google.com itself into that container. Then sign out of Google in your "default" container, which is where you'll be searching from most of the time. There's no reason to make it easy for Google tie every bloody search you do to your Google ID, and this extension makes protecting your privacy easy and painless.

Personally, I'm less worried about the US's NSA and the UK's MI6 than I am about Google themselves. After all, the former two can probably get any info they want about me whether I use Google or not, but Google's entire business model is to collect as much info as possible about their users and sell it to anyone who's willing to buy. You may not be paying for their services with money, but they aren't really free; at least make Google do a little work for their "payment" (your personal info) rather than just giving it to them.

As to the original question, I've used Startpage.com as my default search engine for some time. AIUI it's actually a "meta-search" that feeds your searches to several search engines (including Google) and consolidates the results, so you aren't really giving up Google's advantages by using it; but at least you're avoiding "the filter bubble."

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Search results and partnerships

DDG: Sources search results primarily from Bing and Yandex, but also has its own web crawler. DDG has a “strong” partnership with Yahoo.

SP: Sources results from Google, but has policies and anti-tracking methods in place to ensure user privacy.

 

:hello:

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With New Moon I set Startpage as my homepage and Ecosia as deafult's search engine.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

If I use DuckduckGo with I.E.8 I don't have access to the search engine settings.

Qwant Lite also works with IE8.

But I think research is penalized.:dubbio:

You could verify? :worship:

TH.:hello:

***** EDIT ****

Interesting tool to add a search engine such as Duckduckgo or Qwant Lite to Internet Explorer.
Can anyone make it work?

http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/searchbuilder.asp

 

 

Edited by Sampei.Nihira
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I'm lucky enough to have inherited "Quick Search.exe" from IE5(!) on Windows 98 (before upgrading it to IE6). Amazingly, it still works in IE8 (although most of its pre-provided search engines are ancient history now). So I never really needed to add search providers; I just added another Quick Search and was done with it.

I found an article saying that Quick Search.exe was also part of TweakUI for XP, but I don't know if that is still available either.

3 hours ago, Sampei.Nihira said:

Interesting tool to add a search engine such as Duckduckgo or Qwant Lite to Internet Explorer.
Can anyone make it work?

http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/searchbuilder.asp

Yep. Unfortunately Startpage doesn't work (it creates HTML/CSS/etc. that isn't compatible with IE8, so the search results aren't readable); but try

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=TEST

... in the first text field, type Wikipedia (or whatever) in the second, then click "Install". You'll be asked "Do you want to add this search provider?" and there will be a check box to make it your default. Click the check box if desired then click "Add." Now it will show under Tools / Manage Add-Ons / Search Providers.

<rant>I honestly don't understand why IE (and FF, for that matter) make adding search engines such a complex mess! All any browser should need is a simple dialog box, like this one in Opera 12:

untitled.PNG.1766ce926c98f0761691f60342fba2ee.PNG

But nooooo.... Instead everyone has to over-complexify this seemingly simple task with XML or JSON or some other such nonsense.</rant>

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1 hour ago, Mathwiz said:

<rant>I honestly don't understand why IE (and FF, for that matter) make adding search engines such a complex mess!

Remotely relevant, but in all three of New Moon 28, Serpent 52.9.0 and Serpent 55.0.0 I have installed the XUL extension Add to Search Bar:

https://firefox.maltekraus.de/extensions/add-to-search-bar

Last version 2.9 can be found inside CAA (caa:addon/add-to-search-bar) :P

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15 hours ago, VistaLover said:

Remotely relevant, but in all three of New Moon 28, Serpent 52.9.0 and Serpent 55.0.0 I have installed the XUL extension Add to Search Bar:

https://firefox.maltekraus.de/extensions/add-to-search-bar

Last version 2.9 can be found inside CAA (caa:addon/add-to-search-bar) :P

It is not necessary to use a extension for the Search Engines management:

c6uav7r6_o.jpg

It is possible to add other search engines in the way I described in the first topic:

r0lWKf29_o.jpg

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1 hour ago, Sampei.Nihira said:

It is not necessary to use a extension for the Search Engines management:
(snipped)
It is possible to add other search engines in the way I described in the first topic:

I agree that the management of already installed Search Engines can be performed quite fine by New Moon's native functions/tools; using the extension I mentioned comes very handy in the cases one wants to add a rather obscure search engine not to be found on the official PM Search Plugins page that you linked to, or when a page does not provide an easy way to add its search among the browser's Search Engines set...

E.g. with "Add to Search Bar" I can easily add our own forum's search utility, or BBC iPlayer's, etc

hO6IaCX.jpg

bjzMRdW.jpg

The extension itself appears to be using minimal resources:

j4mgX4e.jpg

(via about:addons-memory, extension to be found on GitHub)

:)

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I've used IXQuick, DuckDuckGo and StartPage almost as long as I've had a PC for 'sensitive' searches, particularly in relation to medical matters but even StartPage is not as good as plain Google for finding some obscure or useful stuff. I've had it happen numerous times when I've used StartPage putting in exactly the same search parameters and plain Google has found what I was looking for and StartPage didn't.

We might all hate Google but it is the best there is and even the image search is now better than my previous preference for those purposes: Bing.

Some bright spark at Bing decided it would be a really good idea to remove the text back-colour from the provided size/resolution info. Instead they replaced it with drop shadows, which I dislike for any purposes. What this means that with any image search result thumbnails predominantly white or light in colour the size/resolution info is now unreadable. Stupid.

Google use a dark, transparent back colour to white text meaning the info can be read easily whatever the picture colour content. Small but important things like this make the difference for me when choosing what search engine I use, private or otherwise.

One thing I should add about StaPage is something that happened to me recently - my browser decided to update itself and disabled some addons in the process. But what it didn't mention was that my StartPage saved personal settings saved had also been borked. It was only after I launched StartPage a few days later after sorting out the addon problem that I became aware of this thanks to a pop-up (never thought I'd ever say that)  which warned me my settings might have been changed to the default. They were.

So always a good idea when using a private search engine/browser just to check the settings are what you want, particularly the privacy and security ones. 

Edited by WalksInSilence
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4 hours ago, WalksInSilence said:

StartPage is not as good as plain Google for finding some obscure or useful stuff. I've had it happen numerous times when I've used StartPage putting in exactly the same search parameters and plain Google has found what I was looking for and StartPage didn't.

We might all hate Google but it is the best there is and even the image search is now better than my previous preference for those purposes: Bing.

Sad but true. Thus, I reiterate:

On 5/12/2019 at 8:45 PM, Mathwiz said:

[C]onsider Serpent 55 and the Multi-Account Containers extension. Force gmail, youtube, and the like into a "Google" container where you can sign in and stay signed in - but don't force google.com itself into that container. Then sign out of Google in your "default" container, which is where you'll be searching from most of the time. There's no reason to make it easy for Google to tie every bloody search you do to your Google ID, and this extension makes protecting your privacy easy and painless.

I realize not everyone will want to migrate to Serpent 55 just to use one extension, but we all have to use Google from time to time, so it's worth considering at least.

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On 5/13/2019 at 3:45 AM, Mathwiz said:

Force gmail, youtube, and the like into a "Google" container where you can sign in and stay signed in - but don't force google.com itself into that container. Then sign out of Google in your "default" container, which is where you'll be searching from most of the time. There's no reason to make it easy for Google tie every bloody search you do to your Google ID, and this extension makes protecting your privacy easy and painless.

I'm quite sure (for reading in the past google conditions) that google can always connect informations gathered from research and all others activities (logged or not) and associate them to the device id used. 

So even if you stay un-logged from Google World, the Google World is always logged into you. 

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Multiple containers look like two different browser profiles on the same PC, with separate cookies, etc. Google's algorithms will likely interpret that as two different users in the same household, only one of which has a Google ID. Containers are just a more convenient approach than using a separate browser or profile for Gmail and YouTube.

(BTW, another, similar option is private tabs, which you can create via the "Private Tab" add-on. Same idea, except you'll have to sign into Google each time. And the Private Tab add-on works with other FF-derived browsers besides St 55.)

I'm sure Google employs browser "fingerprinting" techniques; thus you should employ additional countermeasures: disable Flash, which you don't need with YouTube; use an anti-canvas-fingerprinting add-on like Canvas Defender; use add-ons like uBO and Privacy Badger to block, or at least minimize, Google's tracking on other sites; and most importantly, just minimize your use of Google! Just because you're forced to use them on occasion doesn't mean you should give up. You may not be able to stop them completely, but at least you can slow them down a bit and make your info less valuable to them.

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