Will try to be brief - though this may seem a bit techy, thought would be useful for my friends.An article today in the newspaper set me thinking. It was an article on 'tracking' search results ( the word tracked was 'sex') to profile regions, people etc. ('The Economic Times, 12 Jan 2012, Page 24 - Last page). Check the e-papers here.
The article brought out which areas (states, cities etc) were searching for particular words etc, and based on this 'Google' threw up the analysis of who is searching for what (Check out Google Trends and detailed analysis from Google Insights for Search on the horrors of what all you can find out from searches) !! That is fair enough! But what set me thinking was - not only issues about privacy, but what all other information that these search engines can gather and analyse??
What about profiling what interests a community has - say like a 'government' colony (bureaucrats, defense, railways etc) who have shared/captive Internet access - and maybe build up some kind of scenarios etc?? It can also single out a particular IP Address for search tracking - just to know say what the CEO (of heads of Government Organisation!!) of a company is interested in (just track his home PC IP Internet searches when the defenses are down!!) !!! The possibilities seems endless. Just left to your imagination!!!
To cut a long story sort - my thought was are there search engines that liberates us from these 'search history' or 'profiling'?? Can I do something to stop this sort of profiling possibilities??? Well, of course resorted to 'Google' (maybe for the last time!!) and did a bit of my own search (being on leave does give one some time :) and came up with a solution that neatly fits into my requirement - that is 'no tracking my searches!!!!' - thus 'me-excluded-from-profiling'
The solution is : http://duckduckgo.com
(You can add it to Firefox search option, or bookmark the site - check your search results on http://www.duckduckgo.com
to believe the great search results. Also check out the simple-easy-to-understand settings etc. )
and read all about privacy issues here: http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.
To get an illustrated idea of the issue, visit: http://dontbubble.us/
And watch this TED Talk video to know more about the concerns: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_
Why this funny 'duckduckgo' ?? Well, for one, this website explains it all: http://www.dedoimedo.com/
Can we trust it? Well, I use Open Source Software exclusively, and use 'Linux Mint' at Home and Office - and 'Linux Mint 12' now has offered 'duckduckgo' as a default search engine!! That seals my trust! But am sure there are many world wide experts who agree with it too! Lots of great things have been written about 'duckduckgo' (just go duckduck it!!)
Let me end it here - by saying, take steps to minimise risks to your privacy, and use 'duckduckgo
' to read up more on the issue.
And noooo, am not paid by 'duckduckgo' :-) - just my interest to have a safer Internet experience for my friends!
Pass it on to your friends if you find this useful!!
Happy searching - duck-duck or quack-quack whatever !!!
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