Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

Basically startpage submits search data to google but without any identifiable information in it. So google still gets searches made etc but without knowing who did so... Whether this is tolerable by them I don't know but its certainly more preferable to using Google.

I get results in different orders when using both search engines. For example searching for "blazink" on startpage gives me first links to restaurants in the US with that name and then Flickr results while google does the opposite presumably due to me being far away from the US...

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

I think that maybe startpage is puting some money into google pocket for using their search engine for their needs. If fast all people use google where I live and I run an internet news site I have to see where my posts land at google in my country. Few days ago I told my friends why I left facebook (the company page is left for obvious reasons) and moved to startpage they all made bigg eyes and thought I had gone bannanas. Hell they even made phone calls what is wrong. DuckDuckGo doesn't show me what my reder is seeing. Also for personal use it is not as good for me because even if I filter the serach to my language or made it preferable I get tons of links in English which is ok sometimes but still... I like to read in my own and not English here English there all day :)

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

Google solution: tell all your friends and family to log in their Google account so they see only personalized search history and don't receive the general , per IP search history we will send anyway.

My solution: block locally running Google predictive scripts, use the 90's version of this search engine, or better use a Google proxy like Startpage.com , block all other unnecessary Google services in your browser by Noscript, block all possible Google tracking servers on your personal firewall and router firewall.

You don't need Google, Google needs us. Let them pay for what we give them or at least don't hand it to them for free.

Make websites shift their focus to ranking in Duckduckgo or IXQuick

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

First, I have full right to hide my own private activities from anybody and everybody. I don't want CIA digging through my web-activity just because most of Internet traffic goes, one way or another, through their country. Using SSL when you can is good, but not quite enough. One of my actions is security through obscurity; multi-tasking, using several websites and webbrowsers for the same purpose, using one website and one browser for several purposes at once; generating an excessive amount of information, defragmented into small pieces which can be put together in many different ways, like a mosaic, using multiple layers which do not make sense separately, while finding connections between them, similar to control points of photograph-stitcher, is mind-boggling for any outsider (unless he has direct 24-7 access to my screen, but hopefully, they are not that determined to break into my computer).
Second, I am an adult, not a child, even though I sometimes wish I could have returned to the past, 50-100 years earlier. Also, I expect that everybody has kept secrets from parents, at one stage or another, if only to surprise them with a gift for a celebration - there is no shame in keeping secrets, in having privacy. And there are much more interesting things to do than break laws just for the sake of rule-breaking.
TOR project is good, but I am too lazy to join in. To be a true TOR user, you have to make effort to not use different identities during one session, to not give away any personal information about yourself. My principle of overloading the observer with seemingly unconnected bit and pieces seems to be quite opposite to Tor's anonymity.
Best wishes.
_________________
Per aspera ad astra...

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

Wiki, I understand your point of view, but look at it this way, you can use whatever, SSL, DDG, TOR, and if CIA or whatever other organizations like this want to track you, they can! Is it surprising that even now some TOR (which is supposed to be the most secure internet browsing) exit points can be detected and traced back to you? If normal people can do that, think about since when the CIA can d that.

The second point of view I would like you to think about is this: Ok, you have the right to hide every personal information you want, and you hide it maybe from some of your friends (who can maybe use that against you), from your family (which can spoil a surprise), from your girlfriend (which can show her that you were cheating - i'm joking of course). So in addition, you hide info from the circle of friends around you. Now, CIA gets all that data, and a unknown agent from USA reads it, he don't know you, you have no relation with him/her, so why even bother caring that an unknown person can see what you are using your internet for. You are not a corrupt politician, you are not part of the mafia, you are nothing to be a headline for the CIA to track you in particular, you are just a user, one user out of several millions that get trough those CIA filters... So WHY EVEN CARE?

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

Well, first, CIA-and-other-spies are not omnipotent. Or they would have cracked down on WikiLeaks and Anonymous, already. Though, I have to admit that tracking a person is much easier than stopping a person from travelling, or from exchanging information with another person.
I am a hopeless optimist. I know that it is impossible to stop them from tracking me - if they want to spend time and energy tracking me - but I am not going to make it easy for them.
Because I want to cause such a massive headache for whoever wishes to track me that they will give up on their attempts to track all Internet users. You want to know my name, my location, my hobby, my opinion on a particular topic, my dream?.. Do not track me, do not stalk me, just ask me - it will be easier. I may not answer you at once, I will ask why you want to know this, but it will still require much less effort from you than attempting to track me. I hope CIA will get it through their thick skulls, with time. If a human googles for home-made explosives, it doesn't make him a terrorist or a pyromaniac. If a human doesn't google for home-made explosives, it doesn't prove that he isn't knowledgeable enough to make explosives at home. If I discuss explosives excessively, it doesn't mean that I know, or intend to know, anything about them. Attempting to ascertain anything about a person by tracking their Internet activity is a waste of time, and I would have liked to see a 'game' where one team uses Internet and another attempts to track them, and observe how the first team tricks the second team into quite false conclusions.
Best wishes. By the way, do you remember the 'recent' news about Google giving some-information-about-users to government, on government's requests? If everybody used startpage.com instead of google.com, Google would have had no information to give to the government. Right?

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

Do you happen to have curtains in your house? If so, why do you care that strangers can look inside and see all the activities you're doing in there? You're not a corrupt politician, you are not part of the mafia, ..

Well, I for one just don't want anybody to peak inside.

Furthermore, you don't know how the data collected about you online will be distributed, processed (correlated, passed through models etc.) and used, whether that might be in the present or in the future. I am simply not comfortable with people tracking & profiling me, you will never know what might come out of it, when and by who. It's pretty scary how easily you can discover or generate new, interesting data from a big pile of seemingly non-interesting data. And remember: storage and computing power is cheap these days.

So don't just give out a free pass to track you when you got "nothing to hide", especially to strangers. Not knowing what one will do with your seemingly non-interesting data should be enough reason to not give it away. That's at least why I care.

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

Theox,

I can't believe your statements, coming from a Romanian. I spent a couple of months there, late ninetees, and I still remember people telling me of how afraid they had been, not only of the government or their police or intelligence agencies, but also of each other, as many remembered being reported to the government by their fellow villagers, for little "crimes" as not reporting a sleep-over at somebody else's house in a different village.

What would you advise this man?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

Well the funny thing is that I don't really have curtains, when I designed how I want the place where I live to look like I designed it as clean as possible. Personally, in my opinion, curtains are so ... not so modern. And yes, trust me, I don't care if people peek inside my house, they SEE WHAT? ME NAKED OR WHAT? That's what I do inside my home, eat, sleep, take a bath and maybe watch a movie, what's so special about that?

Because that was just after the fall of the communism. People were still terrified about what happened during that period. It's over 20 years now since the fall of the communism, I ain't afraid of nothing.

P.S. Don't forget, even if you don't let Google or whatever track you, and you do the best you can to hide, remember this: YOUR ISP IS WATCHING!

Re: Just discovered a breach of security with google
 

I do not sync my browsers, and how could this be possible since I use the laptop, and my son uses the Nexus, and neither have touched the other machines?

Read back to my original posting, Google revealed information on my queries to another person's machine. How is that NOT a sequrity breach?

Now I never talked about startpage or DDG, that was other people.

All the opposite, I was worried that children might get something not suitable for their eyes if somebody else (not specifically even of same household) has made queries that resulti onto such links.

Just read back what I posted in the first place, please.