I'll stick with StartPage. That way I can get the Google results without Google collecting or reporting my metadata.
Here's the Wikipedia page on StartPage and their parent company Ixquick. Thankfully, the Dutch government understands and enforces the basic right to privacy.
First, it may sound hard to believe, but Google not only Just Doesn't Care about you personally, Google actively really doesn't want to know anything about you personally. As far as Google is concerned, you're a cookie, not a person -- and, for what it's worth, it wants you to stay that way. What it don't know, it can neither be forced to reveal, nor, worse, reveal by accident.
Second, and more important, Google's really not the real risk to your privacy out there. Fact is, you leak metadata all the time. When you logged in to make a comment here? You left a trail of cookie crumbs. When you apply for a professional license, you left a cookie crumb. Every been bankrupt? Ever been in default on a line of credit? Ever had a cell phone? There are companies aggregate and sell those trails of cookie crumbs. It's among the kind of stuff that the credit rating agencies (and "alternative credit agencies") sell.
Did you or did you not vote in the last election? That's a public record, and somebody, somewhere, has aggregated it with other data about you and packaged you -- and this is the real person, you -- up and sold you to somebody else. Probably to a lot of somebody elses. In some states, if voted in a primary, the party in whose primary you voted in was kept as a public record. Yes, someone can figure out your political affiliation from the records in the county courthouse.
Ever use a credit card or a debit card? That information's for sale, although the purchasers have to meet certain requirements about data storage and usage to purchase it. That's OK, though, they can buy versions of the data without the PII (personally identifiable information) obscured without those restrictions. It's cheaper, too. I know security researchers who've looked at the problem of figuring out how to beat that kind of obfuscation. They tell me that it really isn't very hard. I believe them.
Spookybot. They're not just in QC any more.
I won't deny that Google could be a threat to your privacy, although it really doesn't want to be. Facebook and Amazon *are* risks to your privacy, although Amazon takes protecting it seriously. I wish I could confidently say the same about Facebook. But the real risks to your privacy? They're here in meatspace, not out there is cyberspace.
Author
Topic: Official Fanart thread (Read 739736 times)