You've probably read the news already that Scroogle is gone forever. It launched back in 2003 and was popular among searchers who wanted to get Google search results in a private setting. Now that it's gone, where can searchers go for a more private search experience than Google and Bing offer by default? Here's a list of a few alternatives. Note that different search engines below make different privacy-related claims; I haven't investigated them in detail -- i.e., by examining cookies, etc. -- so anyone looking for a private search experience should do his/her own research. Private Sea [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Web Search | Channel: Consumer | DuckDuckGo | Features: General | Google: Privacy | Google: Web Search | Legal: Privacy | Search Engines: IxQuick & Startpage | Top News

Likely sensing an opportunity after Google's recent encrypted search announcement, Ixquick -- a tiny and widely unknown search engine -- has announced that it will make SSL encryption the default on all searches. Ixquick says it became the first search engine to offer encrypted search back in 2009. In its announcement, Ixquick notes that the major search engines have recently begun to offer SSL encrypted searching. Other search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have begun to follow Ixquick's lead by offering SSL encryption. However, the privacy benefits of using SSL with other major se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy | Search Engines: IxQuick & Startpage

IxQuick, which bills itself as "the world's most private search engine," has changed its name to the much-easier-to-remember Startpage. Startpage is a meta search engine that's tried to differentiate itself from the pack by using privacy as a marketing feature. In 2006, shortly before the mistaken release of three months of AOL search data, the service announced that it would purge its users personal data within 48 hours. This past January, IxQuick stopped recording IP addresses completely and began offering secure searching via the https protocol. But judging by the general lack of awa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy | Search Engines: IxQuick & Startpage