Search Engines and Privacy - Part 1

This is the part of the Internet experience where most users give away their privacy. The Internet is free and that means you are the product. The more data companies can compile on you while you use all the free services available to make your Internet experience fun, the more you are exposed to be manipulated through data or to be fed tailored articles to you. Facebook is the champion at manipulating the data it feeds you through its extensive violations of normative privacy.
In this blog, you will also learn that there is life beyond Google. Yes, I agree that Google is an amazing search engine, to the point that we have even made verbs in many languages with its brand…I will google this or that, googlea esto o lo otro, etc.
 
How many search engines are there?
Many. In this blog, I will talk about Google, DuckDuckgo and Ixquick. Bing/Yahoo are not worth talking about. I will touch on a couple of others on the follow up to this blog.
 
The fundamental difference between the three is that only Google parses your search with your IP address. This is the reason I highly recommend your using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service such as ExpressVPN.com (in my humble opinion is the best in the marketplace). This means that when you type “How to cook Italian pasta al dente,” Google will notate your IP address and the fact that you like to eat pasta cooked the Italian way. Next thing you notice is that you are getting ad after ad of Barrilla pasta.
On the other hand, Google allows the use of Boolean and white hat hacking techniques. It also allows use of its cache to peruse information before clicking on the link. More on this below.
 
Duckducgo (duckduckgo.com) prides itself for not collecting any user data. Founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg, it is slowly but steadily becoming Google’s fierce competitor. DuckDuckGo is my favorite by far when I need to look for a person. It does an excellent job at bringing page after page of information that contains the person I am looking for. It has an App for the iPhone and Android platforms.
 
On the other hand, DuckDuckgo does not have a cache for you to look at, and it does not accept Booleans and white hat hacking techniques.
 
Ixquick.com owns the famous Startpage search engine that you see when you use TOR. Its CEO states that “privacy is a basic human right;” thus, you can imagine that this search engine does not parse the words you search and they are not paired with your IP address. Ixquick.com is owned by Surfboard Holding BV, a privately owned Dutch company.
​
In the example below, note that Ixquick gives you the option of selecting a Proxy instead of clicking directly on the title of the result. This Proxy is an anonymizer that masks the IP address of your Internet connection. If you real IP address is located in Arlington, VA, when you hit Proxy, you will show to the webmaster of the site you are visiting that you are coming from The Netherlands. Also note on the photo below that the link that has a green down arrow is not for a cached page but it is an advertisement. Ixquick does not offer the option of looking at cache. This will be addressed below when I talk about the difference between footprint and rank. ​

Ixquick allows Booleans and white hat hacking techniques with a lingo that is completely different than the lingo used by Google. Until not long ago, Ixquick would allow you to enter the Booleans on your own but because they were truly complicated, the new version of Startpage allows you to set the home page with Advanced Search features. Click on the three parallel lines on the upper right corner, and select Settings. Under General, on the third row, mark the Homepage search more to Advanced Search. Now, you are ready to customize your search.

How can you quickly access all three search engines?

I like to have them showing on my Bookmark Tool Bar, and Ixquick has its own toolbar which is pretty handy.Go to Google.com and you will see the empty search page. On the URL bar, towards the right, and providing you are using Google in Incognito mode as advised on my previous blog, you will see a white star. Click on that star and a pop down window will give you the option of where to put that bookmark. Select Bookmark Bar. Then, go to the three parallel lines or three vertical dots you see on the right hand side of Chrome, and select Bookmark-->Show Bookmark Bar.Now, go to Duckduckgo.com, and do the same process with the search page to add it to your bookmark bar.For Ixquick.com, you need to be temporarily out of Chrome incognito mode. You need to surf in regular mode just to add the bookmark. Go to Ixquick.com and click on the three parallel bars on the right hand side and select Toolbar and follow the instructions on the screen.Once you are on the Settings page of Chrome, mark Show in Incognito mode for the Ixquick toolbar extension. Now you can go back to Chrome incognito mode and enjoy the three search engines to the reach of your fingertips.

Why do I need to be mindful of footprint and rank?

Digital footprint is the mark you leave on Internet services when your actual IP address, MAC (machine access code) address, and the IP of your WiFi or wire connection to the Internet are recorded in the websites you visit, the Apps you run on your mobile devices, the vehicles you rent or own and allow Bluetooth for your mobile devices, etc.

Page rank is determined by the famous algorithm written by Larry Page. Page rank will put on page one of a search engine the websites that people visit the most. The most popular pages will show first.
Thus, when you are searching things on the Internet for fun or work related topics, and you are happy go lucky clicking and clacking on every link you see, you are increasing the page rank of all those websites you touch. If the website is a topic that goes against the American Way of Life, you might not want to make that page more popular than it is, therefore, I recommend that you look at that page in the cache mode of Google search.Even if you are covering your tracks by using a VPN and/or TOR, you are increasing popularity of unwanted pages.
​
This is how you can see the Google cache. This is a photo that Google has taken of the website you are interested in so you are not creating page rank and you are not leaving a footprint on the website either.Click on the arrow to the right of the URL until you see the word Cache display. Click on Cache and you will see a photo that Google has taken of the page in question.

---

This is all for now folks! Thank you for reading.

Meta brings the courses Risk Management When Online and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Collection and Analysis to your organization regardless of where you are located. Watch this short clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRXazQuPzFs Then call us to schedule training for your team or organization.