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Try the no cartoons page, its only 1239 bytes.

Why not promote Scroogle to the world?

Could I suggest Scroogle's SSL with the POST method?

Breaks my heart to see everyone here talking about Google, but maybe that's because I'm on UK's Virgin (likely to be Phorm infested at any time makes you paranoid).

Could I suggest Scroogle's SSL with the POST method?

Breaks my heart to see everyone here talking about Google, but maybe that's because I'm on UK's Virgin (likely to be Phorm infested at any time makes you paranoid).

No, that's already being used --> https://ssl.scroogle.org/

And Microsoft would NEVER use anybody else's IP.........

No, that's already being used --> https://ssl.scroogle.org/

If you are that worried, you could try scroogle.

You seem to equate "features" with quality of the search engine.

Some value

- speed
- a clean interface and
- relevance of the search results (which can be improved by analyzing my previous searches)

If you want to surf the web anonymously, use TOR. Trusting the site saying "we don't have server logs, PROMISE" is silly.

Use http://www.scroogle.org/ if you like Google results but don't want to feed the evil empire. There's even an SSL search plugin for it.

If you use Tor for anonymity, consider using Scroogle for your search engine.

scroogle is a good search engine. http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html

Thanks Microsoft, but as I value my online privacy, I'll stick with Scroogle instead.

(Reposted with Correct Link)

As the article points out, these trojans/viruses that use Google and other search engines are becoming more common. My mother got one that replaced all of the major search engine results with fake spyware and antivirus software links. I imagine its popular because its a bit subtle and pernicious. How much malware is out there that is undiscovered because the affects are more subtle? Maybe reordering search results? Replacing ads with different ones?

For my mom, I ended up using http://www.scroogle.org/ to download AV software to fix it. Seeing it for the first time, it was surprising to me that search engine results could be corrupted in this way. (I guess not that surprising...) And, I must admint I don't know if these programs are latching on to the browser applications somehow or if they are doing it somewhere else in the OS layer. It would be interesting to find ways to prevent these symptoms in a more sophisticated way than using Scroogle (i.e., finding a search engine they hadn't considered). If these viruses are using the underlying OS, would the search engines using SSL by default be a way to do it? Or would a man in the middle attack negate that? And I'd imagine there had to be a way to lock down the browsers themselves, or at least make it difficult, from this kind of attack if that's their point of entry.

  When I was a kid, a friend of mine and I made two anti-virus viruses. (We didn't spread them around, just did them for research purposes.) The first one modified COMMAND.COM to expect .EXX, .MOC, and .TAB files instead of the standard ones, and then renamed all of the files on the system this way. This broke some programs, requiring a hex editor now and again, but it basically made my friend's system immune to viruses. The other one attached on a little self-CRC checker to every executable which would print a warning if another program had altered the file. Fun times. I wonder if these ideas are patented now.

This may not have been intentional, but the Scroogle link in parent post is wrong, and goes to a site that is NSFW.

Correct link is here.

Scroogle Is Your New Friend.

Been using it for some time now. It's enough that the buggers have my mail without knowing that I like goat pr0n^w^wpepperoni pizza too.

Two ways to DENY Google:

http://www.ixquick.com/ (Meta-search engine that doesn't store IP)

http://scroogle.org/ (Google search without tracking!)

So you don't use any internet search engine then right? They all need to get their metrics somehow to determine if a ranking algorithm is working. Otherwise we're all back to dmoz and browsing

Try scroogle.org - Google's data on a completely anonymous basis.

mozilla/firefox is making million from google

http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html

Not if you're signed in to your Google Account, not if you're not signed into your Google Account either! (Whoda thunk it?)

Google will still have the data in their logs, even if the sites you visit don't have it.

Even if you're not signed in, the search will still be tied to your IP address for 18 months, or whatever Google's "anonymisation" policy is.

You could use Scroogle, which claims to store no cookies, and re-route your request through a random IP address out of their pool, but who's to say they'll not keep logs as well?

Only way to be sure is to not even look.

1. Mod parent up.

2. https://ssl.scroogle.org/ is even better.

3. There's no reason to ever use Google directly again.

Given the way things are now I don't see how anyone could have the expectation that anything you do on the web could possible be anonymous. ... At least with the Googles, and the Yahoos you have a reasonable idea of what they are keeping and how they are using it.

Nada.

One of the best links I learned from earlier Slashdot discussions was Scroogle, Google results with no tracking, ads or loss of anonymity.

Of course Google "believes" personalized search is the future. It's in their advertising interest to learn as much about you as they can. That's where their revenue comes from. You can't really expect them to say anything that would negatively impact revenue.

I have not found that personalized search yields good quality results. That may be because most of my searches are about stuff I don't know rather than stuff I already know. More important is the choice of personalized or non-personalized search. What Google isn't talking about, and hasn't given consumers the option of to-date, is any choice in this matter (bean-counter mandate to be sure, "do no evil" marketing aside).

That's why I use Scroogle https://ssl.scroogle.org/scrapen8.html

How do you Anonymize IP logs?

By using Scroogle.

Note to mods:
I got my karma for this post here, don't mod me up again for the same information <grin>.

If you don't like the thought of Google watching your every move, you could always try Scroogle.

More information here and here.

Firefox search plugin available too, but some links to it don't work.

If you don't like the thought of Google watching your every move, you could always try Scroogle.

More information here and here.

Firefox search plugin available too, but some links to it don't work.

I suggest you use Scroogle. It surely provides more anonymity than clusty. See for yourself.

There are search proxies to google which would guard your search traffic. Unfortunately that means you have to trust Scroogle on top of everything else, and of course, if you click on any of the results, you'll go to the target page in the clear.

Why does Google not want to provide an SSL search page? It could only be a benefit to their users.

I also have no idea why more people don't use GPG/PGP. Ease of use has come a long way, at least in Thunderbird. I find the Outlook and Mail.app plugins that are currently available lacking in the area of non-annoyance.

Nordic countries usualy have great laws regarding those things.

That said, right now security-paranoid geeks (or rather, anonymity-paranoid ones) probably use tor, which is more than fast enough for searches, or scroogle( http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm ) which is good enough most of the time (it makes the query for you, so google only see their server).

As for finding an ideal country to set up servers, thepiratebay were thinking about buying an island and declaring it an independant country.

That would raise a lot of interesting legal questions, since the official version is that any country is souvereign. Of course the truth is that economical pressure usually ensures that everyone stays in rank (the way the WTO enforces copyright treaties), and military power is never far from it (Iraq, cold war, commando operations). So if thepiratebay really does buy an island, they will need a lot of support from public opinion to be protected from the truth of diplomacy. My bet is they could still have an "accident" involving fire, pirates or simply cut internet cables. (But it would still be worth the risk I think. Did you know they have a political party now?).

Then of course, you have China. China is actually the reason why tor works: both the US and China operate nodes for their own spies (the US Navy first created tor for their spies, then released it to the public for decoys). Civilians using it are a "side effect" of that first use. And as long as a country does not control most nodes, it cannot break the anonymity.

Sorry for the long post. Feel free to reply, here or at my gmail address: semirealblade.

Shame on them ISPs. Makes me wanna signup to proxify, so that I can opt out of the ridiculous eavesdropping that's taking place. incase consumers don't know, here are some tools to protect yourself:

Scroogle with HTTPS, -> i use this as my primary interface for searching on google, since your search queries reveal alot of personal information and gets used for marketing purposes. :(

Tor Anonymity Network, with Firefox plugin to quickly enable/disable anonymous browsing.

Proxify with HTTPS, although for advanced stuff they want you to signup to their service :(

Last but not least: GnuPG, for encrypting your private data.

Not the ideal solution I know, but if you hit the "low graphics" version of the BBC News site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm - the "text only" in the URL is a lie, it has pictures), it will let you use that rather than redirecting you to the crappy mobile version that splits up the story onto multiple pages. For Google, have you tried using one of the 'google proxies' like Scroogle?

If you're so concerned about it, use something like Scroogle

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=wanted+comic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanted_(comic_book)

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=site:en.wikipedia.org %s

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnI=&q=site:en.wikipedia.org %s

There's no excuse for using Google for anything. Considering Google's #1 motive seems to be to collect as much information as possible on the public, it really makes you question their ultimate goals and wonder about how such a young company got so much funding so quickly to become the monolith they are.

"Free" is far, far too expensive of a price to pay for any of Google's "services", as neat as they may be.

http://www.scroogle.org/ (they even have a https Firefox plugin and an IE agent available) is a good alternative for searching. Don't forget to disable in your hosts file or via adblock all of Google's ads and tracking robots that track 90% of the websites you visit.

Wondering what Google was planning to do with the information they're constantly gathering on me between my emails, searches, news, websites I visit (tracked through adsense), etc, brought me to find a decent set of alternatives: Scroogle for searches, Roundcube for email, and scraper sites like Zewg and Dogpile for everything else.

Funny that the title is "scroogled," that's the name of a prominent anti-google site that runs the Scroogle Scraper, so you can search google without having your entries put in your database. It's nice for doing searches that you'd rather not have in your search profile that google keeps for you. If you use their other services like gmail, they can basically know you intimately. I'd rather they didn't, but can't give up gmail. So it's easy to modify firefox to use scroogle instead of google for searching, and if you adblock adsense, and their urchin.js script, or just google-analytics.com/* they can't see what sites you visit either. It's sad that you have to work so hard to hide your movements from a company that "does no evil" but I guess that's the information economy for you.

friends don't let friends Google while surfing.

try Scroogle

btw, don't know if you've come across scroogle, it's been a goodie for me. One thing I find reassuring about it is that it's clear from the accompanying graphics and text on the scroogle pages that the people running it genuinely hate google... they're more foamy at the mouth about google than I am. :)

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

or

http://hidemyass.com/ -> google.com

If anyone is surprised by this move, they weren't paying attention.

MoFo/MoCo are owned in a serious financial way by Google. Remember the Mozilla Suite was dumped in a similar, though worse, manner just a few years ago when Google poored money all over the cash strapped Mozilla that AOL left behind. Google wasn't interested in financing the suite. Google probably stipulates that their financing only go to Firefox development, where Google is front and center in the users face. Google isn't likely to help finance a mail client where they don't see any return on investment. Google wants you to use Gmail for the ads.

The funds Mozilla had before the Google deal were likely diverted from the suite to Thunderbird and other applications. Mozilla has likely exhausted those funds now. Thunderbird developers should join the SeaMonkey community. Together the community and the projects might survive this.

Future prediction of a friend: When the government cracks down on MoFo's shady tax history, MoFo will go under and Google will likely buy MoCo and spin it as if they saved Mozilla.

http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html

I have too much time and not enough sense :-|

And if the ads really bother you , you can search with Scroogle http://www.scroogle.org/.

do you _know_ what kind of data google collects from all its services and how it uses it to track you? if you don't _know_, then you're not willingly giving up your privacy, you're being conned into giving up your data.

So, due to privacy concerns, the EU dislikes Google storing data on its users, but forces ISPs to retain data for two years? Under the catch-all excuse of 'terrorism' no less.

In the US on the other hand privacy laws generally cover government actions while the business sector remains largely unregulated. Is it perhaps time to follow the European example and extend privacy laws to include corporations?

They could follow each others example: the EU could introduce laws to stop government snooping, whilst the US introduces laws to stop corporate snooping. Personally I find the EU government snooping worse than Google, at least Google is a product choice, government laws can't be worked around. Although the purchase of Double-click does make Google's tracking somewhat difficult to avoid when surfing around.

Failing that, just use Scroogle and/or Tor and/or an ad-blocker. :)

When you're really worried about tracking from google, why not use scroogle scraper?: http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm Mark

My apologies, that link should have been: http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html.

All this shouldn't be too difficult to work around. Google watching my every move? Nope: I use Scroogle! Then there's Tor, it's a bit slow sometimes, but if you don't like it run your own Tor server and help the network speed up. :) There are also all the other ad/cookie blockers mentioned by others here.

The only possibility worrying me is our government overlords demanding people give up the right to use this software in the name of anti-terrorism/anti-paedophilia. Until that time people have a choice whether they're anonymous online, which is good. The people who don't know how to remain anonymous can either read up or pay one of us IT chaps to tell them.

You can mostly protect yourself from this if you use Google and a few simple tips:

1. If you have a Google account, make sure to disable search history and clear your previous searches. Also only login when necessary, not for general surfing.
2. If you get use Firefox get the CustomizeGoogle extension, it allows you to disable Google click tracking and also the Google Cookie (along with a bunch of other nice options like ad removal).

This still won't protect you from your local browser history on your computer, or from your own IP address, you can use a proxy to help conceal your IP from Google, and clearing your local history is easy enough. It really depends on how paranoid you are as to how extensively you wish to cover your tracks.

Finally, another choice is to use the Scroogle Scraper for your general searches, which is basically a totally anonymous Google-front end without Google ads.

I meant to say CustomizeGoogle Firefox plugin

That helps.

Of course, if you want to shorten log retention further than Google's "only 2 years!", you can go through a proxy like Anonymizer or Tor. If the fullbore proxies are too much of a hassle, there's always the search proxies like Scroogle Scraper (where the log retention is 48 hours).

Another approach is to poison the data mine with TrackMeNot by generating thousands of random searches in the background.

Use Scroogle, the Google Scraper to find "anonym.os torrent" and you're all set. Always keep spare copies :)

You're using a rifle. Here's a shotgun:
Left Barrel: http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
Right Barrel: http://www.scroogle.org/scraper7.html