A General Guide to Online Privacy - Part 2: Search Engines

When I finished Part 1 of this series, I said I was going to continue by discussing operating systems, multi-factor authentication, and data storage, but I’ve decided that before we get to those, I want to first go over search engines and which ones you should use and avoid from a privacy perspective.

When you search for something online, if you’re using a search engine by any of the big players such as Google, Microsoft (Bing), Yahoo, etc, every bit of information that they can gather about you is recorded. This includes what you searched for, which links you followed, your IP address, your browser fingerprint, and so on. Do enough searches and they can build a very complete profile of you. This information is then sold to advertisers, and even more insidiously, turned over to the government. Considering the corruption and outright evil that permeates government, this should terrify you. It’s a sad statement on society that most people roll over and accept this as normal or inevitable. To help combat this gross invasion of your privacy, you need to use a search engine that doesn’t record your information.

Start Page

The search engine that respects your privacy the most while still being functional and easy to use is Start Page. It’s decently fast, returns good results, and has a basic but mostly adequate feature set. Start Page is based in the Netherlands where, unlike the US, they have laws that actually protect your privacy and aren’t simply backdoors into your personal affairs. Start Page, owned by Surfboard Holding B.V, a privately owned business, has no mega-corp investors dictating its terms; it is entirely funded by non-user-targeted advertising and affiliate programs. You can be fairly confident that Start Page is an independent operation.

Start Page is what is called a meta-search engine. Unlike Google, Bing, etc, who have crawlers that scour the internet recording everything into a database, Start Page instead searches Google’s database, and then gives you those results in an anonymous manner. None of your information is recorded and no logs are kept. However, being a centralized service, a modicum of trust is required; it’s possible that Start Page is recording your data in secret. Start Page has been audited though by an independent team though which validates its claims of privacy.

One of the coolest features of Start Page is that your searches run through their proxy server which masks your IP address from those trying to track you. Not only that, but any link you click on from your search result will also be directed through their proxy server. While this isn’t as private as using TOR or a VPN service, it’s a pretty good tool to keep you private because observers and the websites you visit through Start Page won’t be able to tell where you’re browsing from.

Using Start Page is just like using any other search engine and they make it easy to integrate into your browser. Some browsers, like Brave, already have Start Page added as one of their included search engines, and all you have to do is change it to the default in the settings. For the other browsers, on the Start Page front page, there is a link specific to the browser you’re using that will allow you to easily add it as one of your search engines.

Until a decent decentralized search engine (keep an eye on Bitclave and Presearch) get up and running, Start Page is probably your best option.

DuckDuckGo

My second private search engine of choice is DuckDuckGo (DDG). DDG is a more feature rich engine, has been integrated natively into more browsers, and generally has a better looking interface. It also returns your results faster than Start Page. It’s not like Start Page is slow, but DDG does have the advantage here. Like Start Page, it is also a meta-search engine but unlike Start Page, DDG isn’t limited to just Google’s database which helps protect you from Google’s political bias; Google has been known to filter out results that it doesn’t care for. Lastly, and also like Start Page, DDG does not record your IP and information or keep any logs of your searches, thus maintaining your privacy.

One of the cool features of DuckDuckGo that separates it from Start Page is the use of “Bangs”. Bangs are a switches you can add to your search query to search a specific website. For example, if you search “!a hardware wallets”, DDG will search Amazon directly and take you to Amazon’s page with the results of “hardware wallets” being displayed. However, it’s important to note that using bangs does not maintain your privacy and will allow Google to record your information. Obviously you shouldn’t use bangs when wanting to remain private.

There are two primary reasons why I consider DuckDuckGo to be second to Start Page. First, they do not route your searches and the links you follow through a proxy server. This means that any site you land on from your DDG search will be able to log your IP and other information. Obviously using a VPN or TOR negates this, but for those times you aren’t using one of those services (which should be almost never, right?), you will be exposed once you leave your search results. The second reason that I prefer Start Page over DDG is that DDG is a US based company, has integrations with Yahoo, and uses Amazon Web Services (AWS). In regards to the US government, it’s possible that they could force themselves into the DDG service to monitor everything and issue a gag order to DDG so no one would be any wiser. With Yahoo, do I really need to say anything? They are among the most compromised internet based businesses in the industry. Not only have they had several massive data breaches, but they also bend over backwards to work with government authorities. As far as using AWS goes, they’re also a US based company, so again, the US government could insert themselves there and no one would know otherwise. While I think DuckDuckGo is above board and really does take your privacy seriously, I just think that there’s less chance of Start Page being compromised by the highly invasive US government.

SearX

The final search engine I want to discuss I have actually never used, I only came across it during my research for this article, so keep that in mind. If you’ve used it, please chime in with a comment! SearX stands apart from other search engines in that you can host it yourself (though SearX also offers a host you can use). As good as Start Page and DuckDuckGo are, we still have to trust them when they say they don’t keep logs or record your information. By hosting your own SearX search engine, you can be 100% guaranteed that your information is not being recorded. The biggest advantage of SearX also leads to its biggest disadvantage - you have to host it yourself, which means you need a server of some sort. If you’ve got an old computer laying around that you can leave on permanently, this may not be a big deal to you, but not everyone has that. As I said, I have never used SearX so I don’t have much more to say about it; I mostly just wanted to bring it to your attention as a possible alternative. You’ll have to do your own research if you want to proceed with SearX.

I have a feeling that Part 3 of this series still probably won’t get to Operating Systems, MFA, and data storage, but rather will be about ways to privatize your cryptocurrencies, but you never know. Either way, stay tuned.

Author: Chris Webb