I have decided to have a re-think about my on-line privacy. I ditched Facebook today - that was easy, since I never really use it and it was how my loved one's soon-to-be ex-husband found some information about me anyway. I then started thinking about all the privacy issues surrounding Google, especially after Google's recent announcement. Ditching GMail may take some time, but it only took a few minutes to find a Google-based search engine, with none of Google's privacy issues. Take a look at www.startpage.com. All your searches will be encrypted by default and no record is kept of your IP address or of what searches you make. I know Google has an encrypted search option, but it is not available on the UK version (which is why I never used Google SSL) but startpage.com automatically uses the relevant local Google search Engine, dependent on your IP address, and encrypts everything! Each search result found in startpage.com can be retrieved anonymously (if required) by clicking on the PROXY link under the relevant search result. I have not really tested it yet, but have set it as the default browser for the time being anyway!!!
I missed that, what Google announcement Howerd? Tor is the normal misdirection browser although I have not used it for donkeys.
I think this in reference to recent Google changes concerning it's search and social platform becoming more integrated. Though they have been criticised by Facebook and Twitter, it is pretty much accepted that Facebook are slowly rolling into the world of search engines.. Once their deal with Bing comes to an end! So the big thing now is not just search, but social search.. Personally, I think it is inevitable that the old web of almost total anonymity is slowly dying - unless you know how to keep yourself private! Most people don't, and so we hear all too often about people falling out or getting fired for things they did online. This might scare you Howerd, although you have switched off your Facebook profile it still exists within Facebook. And whilst you click on any website with a Facebook like button on it (like 99% of the web these days), your very movements could still be getting tracked by Facebook!!
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/01/25/what-do-googles-privacy-changes-mean-for-you/ www.startpage.com is really an anonymous search engine, which has a proxy feature. What I remember about TOR is that it is a really a community of thousands of people, so enforcing any privacy policy would be somewhat difficult! What I like about startpage.com is the ability to choose, on a site-by-site basis, whether to use the proxy or not. That protects my privacy as well as my computer from drive-by downloads, when I visit new sites. It is pretty fast for a free fully-anonymous encrypting proxy. I have been using HIDE MY ASS for a while but its VPN connection was all-or-nothing - I mean that either it was disabled or all connections were via VPN. Given that the VPN disconnected several time a day, it really was of no use. Hopefully, Start Page will give me what I want as an encrypted search engine and encrypted anonymous proxy. I have found a couple of problems when using the proxy - some websites display in Dutch and Javascript is permanently disabled.
Yes, that is what I was reading. Even new GMail users are now forced to sign up to Google+ now. I only linked my Youtube and Google accounts because it was so hard to avoid their annoying popup every time I logged into Youtube. My Facebook account is not linked to anywhere else and I used a unique email on Facebook. I have not just disabled my account - I selected the delete option. The delete option is rather hidden away in the Facebook menus but it is there! For the next two weeks I have the option of logging back in but, in two weeks time, the account is permanently deleted. I also took the time to delete all my friends before selecting the delete option!
https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en Tor is an anonymous encrypted network that hides the transport of data, you have to make sure that the content of your message does not contain anything that could identify you as ultimately the final packets are sent in a readable fashion. Startpage? Well the question would be who are they and why should anyone trust them? Javascript? Well that is the source of all evil and that is a professional programmer speaking God knows why anyone would want to use Javascript, it is the biggest pile of poo that I ever had the misfortune to have to code in, but according to Google and now even Microsoft we are all going to be driven to our graves having to develop the future in HTML 5 and Javascript, where's the sick smiley
Regarding Google's new T & C and intergration between services, would it not make sense if you want to opt out of this is to never sign in to any Google services in the first place? Surely Google can't track you if your not signed in, and like me, you have a ADSL that uses dynamic IP's? On top of that, I block all Google cookies with Firefox AdBlock and NoScript, this takes care of the ads and pop-ups. Where Google have got people is with a requirement to have a Google account if you have an android device. I don't have a dedicated Gmail account, but I do have 2 Google Apps email accounts with organisations I'm involved with, but these are rarely used but I'm stuck with them, and I use one of these with my android phone (HTC Desire), so data sharing is minimal. As for email, I use a combo of Yahoo email and Fastmail paid email account. The beauty here is that I never give out my Yahoo email address, instead I use something called Yahoo disposable email addresses, so each website I subscribe to or shop with has a unique email address - at the last count I had 350. A bit OTT, but I value my privacy. Any website that tries to spam me, I'll know who it is, and the disposable email addess assigned to the website will get changed or deleted, and the website informed. The Fastmail account is for domain email only, but I'm slowly phasing that out to leave Yahoo only. I also have Hotmail, AOL, O2 and Polarismail, but I never use them, just keep them open for old times sake and testing - I've had the AOL account since 1997 and Hotmail since 2001. P.S. The irony of this post is that theres an ad for Google Chrome at the top of the page!!
When I started this topic a few days ago, google.co.uk did not have an encrypted search option - but they do now... https://www.google.co.uk
