Privacy-Centric Search Engine Scroogle Shuts Down

An anonymous reader writes "Daniel Brandt started his 'Scroogle' search engine because he wanted to provide increased privacy to people who searched online through Google. Unfortunately, while Google tolerated this for a while, they began throttling Scroogle queries. This, in combination with extensive DDoS attacks on Brandt's servers, has caused him to take Scroogle offline, along with his other domains. He said, 'I no longer have any domains online. I also took all my domains out of DNS because I want to signal to the criminal element that I have no more servers to trash. This hopefully will ward off further attacks on my previous providers. Scroogle.org is gone forever. Even if all my DDoS problems had never started in December, Scroogle was already getting squeezed from Google's throttling, and was already dying. It might have lasted another six months if I hadn't lost seven servers from DDoS, but that's about all.' Internet users who made use of the services will now need to investigate other options."

Comments

And bing?

[zoloto]

If google was "Squeezing" scroogle by limiting queries, why aren't they doing the same to microsoft's Bing?

Re:And bing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Bing doesn't depend on Google like Scroogle did?

Re:And bing?

[elfprince13]

I think Microsoft was screen-scraping its own users, and not running it's queries of its own, or something like that.

DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

They've a clear policy of not sharing or collecting info

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Atti K.]

Let's hope the same thing will not happen to them.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[PatPending]

https://www.startpage.com/ bills itself as "the world's most private search engine"

Re:DuckDuckGo

[hobarrera]

If only the results where competitive with Google's. But they're not, and it's a shame, because I like DDG in principle, but when it comes to results, they're not there yet.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[dragonquest]

StartPage is run by the IxQuick guys. They are basically the same meta-search engine with Startpage adding Google to the fray.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[steelfood]

They need a better brand if they want to make it big. I'm not commenting on the service per se. But the brand name itself is a big element in what draws new users.

It's three words, comprising one syllable each. So it's effectively five units in length of time to say. Not only that, but the hard "K" in "duck" forces the intermediate pause between the first two words, and encourages it between the latter two (attempts to say the name in only three units' time would sound closer to DU-DUCK-O). The pauses in between each of the individual words carries over from speech to mental reading and writing. Both the writer and the reader, are speaking their words inside their heads when they write or read. Which means the brand is both annoying to read and write about.

The repetition of "duck" makes the URL pretty annoying to type as well. At they very least, they can get a shorter domain that's easy to remember! For other types of products, the need might be different, but for a text-based internet destination, it's gotta be easy to type. They got the "duck" and "go" parts are more or less correct (no one-finger acrobatics needed to type the words), but the repeated duck completely negates the benefit.

Otherwise, they seem like an acceptable alternative to Scroogle. I've used them before, but Google is just easier to type (the double-o detracts a bit, but the brevity of the name more than makes up for this), so I always end up going back to Google.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Rick17JJ]

Startpage does not record your IP address or track your searches. The Startpage the results are actually generated by Google.

Startpage supports SSL. So, when I type in Startpage.com, "https" appears in front of their URL instead of "http." That extra "s" tells me that that encryption is being used between my browser and the Startpage servers.

The sister search engine to Startpage is Ixquick. If I am not mistaken, the Ixquick search results are generated by various search engines other than Google.

Startpage also offers the option of viewing web sites through their proxy service. When selecting something from their search results, just click on "view by Ixquick proxy." Then, they only see the Startpage IP address, instead of your IP address. However, I have almost never actually bothered to use the proxy feature.

Privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht is the enthusiastic spokeswoman for Startpage.

https://startpage.com/

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft pays them to use Bing exclusively.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they be dying? IXquick/Startpage uses sponsored links to finance itself, unlike Scroogle, so they'd be able to afford more servers and cycle IPs more readily then Scroogle could with their limited income.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[c0d3g33k]

Correction: They CLAIM to not record your IP address or track your searches. Without verified evidence that this is true, all the privacy advocates in the world can enthusiastically endorse them, but that won't make me trust them any more than the other search engines. At least the latter admit freely they track you, so you can be more careful with your searches.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

"Otherwise, they seem like an acceptable alternative to Scroogle. I've used them before, but Google is just easier to type (the double-o detracts a bit, but the brevity of the name more than makes up for this), so I always end up going back to Google."

I don't get it. Why are you typing their name at all?

You know, there are such things as bookmarks, and most decent browsers will allow you to configure custom searches.

In both Firefox and Opera, all I have to do to perform a ddg search for "foo" is type "d foo" in my address bar. Not even that, if I configure it as my default search engine. Then all I'd have to do is type the query itself.

Alternately, you can just click in the search box and type your query.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

> The repetition of "duck" makes the URL pretty annoying to type as well. At they very least, they can get a shorter domain that's easy to remember!

http://ddg.gg/

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

At they very least, they can get a shorter domain that's easy to remember!

http://ddg.gg :)

Re:DuckDuckGo

[smellotron]

The repetition of "duck" makes the URL pretty annoying to type as well. At they very least, they can get a shorter domain that's easy to remember!

You only need to type the URL once, to get to the front page. Then right-click the text box, select "create search", and follow the defaults. At least, this works for Opera; for Firefox and IE the functionality is the same but YMMV on the UI. The real beauty is that I can use the bang syntax to get results from other popular search engines, so DDG becomes the default search engine to maximize convenience. Even the Berkeley man-pages (!man).

Also, it may be a cultural thing, but I find "duck-duck-go" very easy to say. It sounds like a common (American?) childhood game, duck-duck-goose, which makes it easy to latch onto despite the length.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Right but IXQuick/Startpage doesn't run its own spider and indexer, it uses results from Google and Bing, which are the last two English-language search indexes worth mentioning. (Yahoo has used Bing for some time now, Altavista has likewise been a Yahoo/Bing wrapper for years, DuckDuckGo combines its own extremely limited index with Bing's, etc.)

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Requiem18th]

Let me get this straight. A search engine that claims to not track you. (actually it was awarded the first European Privacy Seal by the EU so it's their claim) is actually LESS private that a search engine that stores your queries long term and crossreferences them with your email and social networks to built a comprehensive permanent profile?

Re:DuckDuckGo

[LordLimecat]

Wait, Startpage is making Google do all the hard work, then stripping their ads and adding their own for revenue?

Doesnt that seem a little shady to you?

Re:DuckDuckGo

[GargamelSpaceman]

I really like your signature.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[GargamelSpaceman]

This isn't for criminals trying to evade the cops. I wouldn't be surprised if 'the cops' can order them to bug specific IPs etc. This is for the legions who don't want a long-lived list of what they are searching for stored indefinately where it might - far in the future, and under unknowable different future circumstances be used against them.

More importantly Duck Duck Go is a simple way to escape your search bubble. This is a serious problem I've noticed most acutely with YouTube. Your craziness is validated and so magnified by others like you after a while.

The search bubble phenomenon is definately fractious. I'm not saying that fractiousness is good or bad, but one must be careful with things that can alter one's perception, including mass appeal, mental masturbation, and other drugs.

   

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

it says they are using google results .. but Im not so sure.. I just did one search..got 18k results with startpage but 598,000 with google.. also thier first listing was on googles page 7...

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm inclined to disagree. Maybe I don't always find what I expect to find but I wouldn't call their results "bad" either. My main gripe is that the Web of Trust add-on doesn't have a site rating icon available from the search page like it does with Google.

I've been using them as my default search engine for awhile now and am pretty pleased with it. If I'm not happy with the results, I just do a bang! (https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html) search.

DuckDuckGo is one of a few sites that I disable both NoScript and AdBlock on.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[ichthus]

Shady or no, a list of search results is a list of facts. A list of facts cannot be copyrighted (just like a phone book.) So, fair or not, anyone's search results can be copied and republished without worry of copyright infringement.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[TheRaven64]

I've been using them for about a year. Occasionally I don't get a useful result, so I try Google. So far, I have not come across a single instance where DDG does not provide a useful result but Google does (although several times DDG will produce no results and Google will produce 100,000 totally irrelevant links). I also find the DDG zero-click information contains the result I want for more than half of my searches.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[TheRaven64]

They had about $30m of VC funding, which will take a while to burn through. They now show adverts as well.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[c0d3g33k]

I'm not sure where you got the "less private". What I'm saying is that "trust me, I'm not tracking you" means nothing without proof. That includes experts (or governments) saying "trust them - they are not tracking you". I have no proof that is true, so I am most certainly not going to adopt a false sense of complacency and let down my guard on mere assurances. Back in the day there was a word for that: sucker. Search engines that admit they are tracking you don't lull you into a false sense of privacy at least, so you are more likely to take active measures to limit what you divulge. Treat them all the same, and if the privacy-respecting search engines are actually what they claim, you are much better off.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[LordLimecat]

Its not about copyright, its about the gall of calling Google evil for trying to make money off of ads (which IS their business model), then utilizing their server time and service and stripping those ads.

If you really object to their terms, dont use their service.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[justthinkit]

This post, posted 2 hours before your's, says that ddg.gg will get you to the same place.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Disingenuous argument ahoy!
They're calling Google evil for tracking and building massive detailed personal profiles of every person who visits their web assets.
Ads have never been an issue for anyone who knows anything about business on the internet.

Re:DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

They run a TOR exit enclave, and if you're already using TOR, you can reach their search engine without exiting the onion by using their hidden service

No they don't, and no you can't.

DDG's hidden service address is http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ Go there, enter a search, and check the address on your results page: https://duckduckgo.com/html

DDG's .onion address delivers nothing but the landing page. Check the source, that page is fairly bristling with URIs that pull content from, and deliver your form submit data to, the normal IP network. TOR will anonymize this traffic, duh, but the .onion landing page at DDG is nothing but a cheap gimmick.

Scroogle is not a search engine.

[Animats]

Scroogle is not a search engine. Scroogle is a hosted front end to Google. DuckDuckGo is a real search engine, one with good privacy policies and only one ad per page.

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Love this DuckDuckGo search engine, oops, hopefully I will not get throttling, DDoSed and double crossed by Google for saying it.

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[gQuigs]

And a link... http://duckduckgo.com/
ddg.gg is a short url that redirects...

They have sites explaining how they don't track or "bubble" you:
http://donttrack.us/
http://dontbubble.us/

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[ozmanjusri]

duk duo go pulls search queries from bing

No it doesn't, it's searches are actually quite good.

From Wikipedia:
"DuckDuckGo's results are a mashup of many sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha and its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot.[2][21][22] It uses data from crowd-sourced sites, especially Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes, which are grey boxes containing topic summaries and related topics above results.[23] DuckDuckGo also offers the ability to show mostly shopping sites or mostly info (non-shopping) sites via search buttons on its homepage.[24]"

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

duk duo go pulls search queries from bing

Oh, so it does get its search results from Google after all.

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[SnowZero]

No it doesn't

Yes it does. Search for [digital camera] on Bing and DDG. Notice that the first ad is not just similar, it is exactly the same:

Sony® Digital Cameras
Digital Cameras for Beautiful Pictures. Free Shipping Order Now!
store.sony.com

Ok, so they are using AdCenter for ads, but that might not be true for actual search results. Now search for something esoteric and not likely to be in a tiny corpus, such as [state space motion planning]. The results have been re-ordered so clearly DDG has some re-ranking heuristics, but the results that are common (nearly all of them) are uncannily similar, including in most cases the exact same summary snippet. For example, the following exact result (all text) comes back in both:

Informed and Probabilistically Complete Search for Motion Planning ...
Sampling-based search has been shown effective in motion planning, a hard continuous state-space problem. Motion planning is especially challenging when the robotic system

Having a common phrase used throughout a paper yield exactly the same extracted snippet is unlikely, unless the implementations are identical. Since Bing isn't open source, Occam's Razor says they are using the API.

The simple fact is that one guy cannot implement a modern search engine, despite our hopes for the continued relevance of the garage revolutionary. While DDG likes to downplay the Bing API dependence, the majority of results come from there, and the rest is a few bits of sugar peppered on top for common queries. Claiming that having a special mode for wikipedia or "zero click" boxes makes it no longer Bing-using is kind of like saying Google's calculator means it doesn't need a search index.

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Query proxy

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

"DuckDuckGo is a real search engine, one with good privacy policies and only one ad per page."

Actually, you can turn adds off completely using DDG's preferences.

Not that you should ever see ads anyway, if you use some decent ad blockers (like Ad Block Plus and Privoxy, to name a couple).

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Occam's Razor might also suggest that a simpler explanation is that Bing is stealing from other search engines, including duckduckgo, google, etc.

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has run a search crawler since they called their search engine MSN Search. DDG has existed for, what, a year?

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[TheRaven64]

Bing powers Yahoo's BYOSS. This is, as the grandparent said, one of the sources that DDG uses. It is not the only one.

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[Animats]

The simple fact is that one guy cannot implement a modern search engine, despite our hopes for the continued relevance of the garage revolutionary.

No, but about 50 people can. Cuil was a business disaster, but they did do a search engine company with about 50 people and a rather modest data center. As of a few years ago, the core search engine team at Google was only about 100 people.

Re:Scroogle is not a search engine.

[allo]

they are a meta-search, and one of the sources is bing. and this is not scraping, they are cooperating there. And as their own crawler is still small and sources like wikipedia, python-documentation, etc. are not contributing to the most searches, most often the results are just bing results. But as long as they are usable, why not. So its mostly just a bing without usertracking.

Hackers with a vendetta?

[Anonymous Coward]

I kinda curious if these "hackers" were people in the Google camp. The data that google harvests helps with ad display which generates revenue. Just a thought.

Re:Hackers with a vendetta?

[Samantha Wright]

Yes; probably NSA people. They're here right now, listening, if you want to send them a message directly.

Re:Hackers with a vendetta?

[ColdWetDog]

OK, thanks, here goes:

*** PLEASE FORWARD TO THE APPROPRIATE STAFF MEMBERS ****

Dear Sirs:

I have been requested by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company has recently concluded a large number of contracts for oil exploration in the sub-Sahara region. The contracts have immediately produced moneys equalling US$40,000,000. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company is desirous of oil exploration in other parts of the world, however, because of certain regulations of the Nigerian Government, it is unable to move these funds to another region.

    You assistance is requested as a non-Nigerian citizen to assist the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, and also the Central Bank of Nigeria, in moving these funds out of Nigeria. If the funds can be transferred to your name, in your United States account, then you can forward the funds as directed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company. In exchange for your accommodating services, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company would agree to allow you to retain 10%, or US$4 million of this amount.

                However, to be a legitimate transferee of these moneys according to Nigerian law, you must presently be a depositor of at least US$100,000 in a Nigerian bank which is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

                If it will be possible for you to assist us, we would be most grateful. We suggest that you meet with us in person in Lagos, and that during your visit I introduce you to the representatives of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, as well as with certain officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

                Please call me at your earliest convenience at 234-598-212-5419. Time is of the essence in this matter; very quickly the Nigerian Government will realize that the Central Bank is maintaining this amount on deposit, and attempt to levy certain depository taxes on it.

You

Re:Hackers with a vendetta?

[capnchicken]

He made himself an enemy of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica too. Plenty of people had incentive to take him down, even if the incentive was little more than 'lulz'.

This is deeply unfortunate

[JoshuaZ]

I'm really saddened by this. I myself had a few tussles with Daniel before (I was very involved when he tried (unfortunately successfully)to get his Wikipedia entry deleted, and I'm a pretty biased source. During that process, he engaged in some pretty nasty behavior, including posting online the personal details of a various Wikipedians, including some who were minors. In the worst act, he gave the personal details of a female admin to Andrew Morrow, an individual who had made hobby of sexually harassing high level female Wikipedians. In that case, Morrow then, using the data from Brandt actually showed up to her place of work. Daniel expressed zero remorse over this and related issues. However, Scroogle was unambiguously a good thing that Daniel was doing. Daniel doesn't play well with others, and in the last year or so, his main feud has been with various elements of Encyclopedia Dramatica along with some of the nastier bits of Anonymous. It shouldn't be too surprising that they really are willing to respond in pretty nasty and destructive ways. The loss of Scroogle represents a real loss of a helpful service. But given that Daniel has now taken down all his domains including Wikipedia Watch which was primarily a list of personal details of various Wikipedians, I do have to see some minimal silver lining. But it isn't sufficient. The internet shouldn't be censored, whether by the government, or by people who have the capability to launch sustained Denial of Service Attacks. There's a real problem here wen someone as stubborn and experienced as Brandt can be brought down by this sort of thing. We worry a lot about censorship from governments through things like ACTA and SOPA, but this sort of thing is functionally as bad. Daniel Brandt's free speech has been essentially curtailed here. Much of that is speech I disagree with, but there's a relevant line attributed to Voltaire about that.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of that is speech I disagree with, but there's a relevant line attributed to Voltaire about that.

Don't feel bad, free speech is OK, but free speech and damn the consequences is dangerous and can be damaging.

If you are speaking with no intent but to bring harm to others, you're outside the scope of, let's call it "the spirit" of the First Amendment. It was written to uphold the right of the people to criticise their government, not to give safe harbour to malicious people who, quote: [post] online the personal details of a various Wikipedians, including some who were minors

So you can love free speech, and simultaneously seek to prevent people from deliberately saying harmful things.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[GmExtremacy]

but free speech and damn the consequences is dangerous and can be damaging.

There is no such thing as "free speech with consequences." Well, provided you meant the government punishing you, anyway. Otherwise, even the worst countries have freedom of speech.

let's call it "the spirit" of the First Amendment.

Let's not. That sounds like an awfully slippery slope right there. If you want unprotected speech, a constitutional amendment is in order. And that's difficult to do for a reason.

So you can love free speech, and simultaneously seek to prevent people from deliberately saying harmful things.

No, you can't. That's not truly free speech. Even if you think it shouldn't be allowed, speech is still being censored.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[Lehk228]

if he has managed to make enemies of wikipedia and ED he must be a real winner

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[MightyMartian]

And who said the old Internet Flameware/Shit-a-thon was dead.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[jschrod]

There is no such thing as "free speech with consequences."

Yes, there is. It is called libel, defamation, and harrassment.

But judging from your post, you've never heard of these words and their relationship to the 1st amendment. There is no absolute right to "truly free speech". It is to be balanced with other rights of other people.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[GmExtremacy]

Yes, there is. It is called libel, defamation, and harrassment.

Then that's not truly free speech. Some speech is being restricted. Whether you or I think that's good or bad is irrelevant.

But judging from your post, you've never heard of these words and their relationship to the 1st amendment.

No, I've read the first amendment. I've just never seen those words in it.

It is to be balanced with other rights of other people.

There is no right to not be offended (at least not yet), lied about, or any other such thing. Okay, maybe there is, but not specifically mentioned in the constitution as far as I know.

I still think there should be a constitutional amendment to clarify this nonsense.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

learn to use paragraphs, fuckwad

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary: Wikipedia wrote an 'article' about Daniel Brandt. He didn't like it. He wrote articles about the Wikipedia admins. They didn't like that.

Conclusion: He's a big meany for spreading information about people and they're paragons of virtue, spreading information about people.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[1s44c]

if he has managed to make enemies of wikipedia and ED he must be a real winner

Wikipedia is a big pile of political nonsense and power abuse, it can be a very hostile environment if you get involved in anyone's fifedom or run into a power crazy admin. It's amazing that project produces anything of real use.

I would like to know just what he did to upset the ED people though.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "free speech with consequences."

Brandt discloses details of a minor, some guy goes directly to their house, abducts them, and rapes them. Free speech with a consequence. And if you want to suggest that this would be the abductor's fault, not Brandt's, then I suggest you re-think with a little less cognitive dissonance.

"Truly free" speech is a nice romantic idea, and might work if everybody was honest and ethical, but the horrible reality is that not everybody is, and "truly free" speech is an irresponsible, dangerous idea.

Before you disagree, consider what you would do if you were being maliciously targeted and slandered on the Internet, and that affected your ability to gain employment. You would sue for libel and defamation, correct? Don't tell me you would accept it "Oh well, it's their right to say these things", and accept the effects of unemployment that are a direct consequence of somebody else's actions.

Re:This is deeply unfortunate

[GmExtremacy]

"Truly free" speech is a nice romantic idea, and might work if everybody was honest and ethical, but the horrible reality is that not everybody is, and "truly free" speech is an irresponsible, dangerous idea.

I didn't actually say that it was a good idea (in that post). I only said that the constitution actually gives no exceptions and that I think we should correct this to more closely follow it.

Before you disagree, consider what you would do if you were being maliciously targeted and slandered on the Internet, and that affected your ability to gain employment.

Perhaps if it was widely known that you could be slandered, people wouldn't be so quick to believe everything they hear like imbeciles.

After all, if slander was legal, you could do it to any employer, as well.

Don't tell me you would accept it "Oh well, it's their right to say these things"

But I did want to tell you that.

and accept the effects of unemployment that are a direct consequence of somebody else's actions.

Yeah. The idiotic employer who believes everything he hears.

Personally, I'm willing to accept not having absolute freedom of speech (although I'd rather have it) if and only if they amend the constitution to list exceptions. As for absolute freedom of speech, I think it might be a nice lesson to imbeciles who decide to believe everything they hear.

DuckDuckGo

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, DuckDuckGo has the friendliest privacy policy around. They don't track you or bubble you. They run a TOR exit enclave, and if you're already using TOR, you can reach their search engine without exiting the onion by using their hidden service.

Well, this seriously sucks

[tapspace]

I just found Scroogle this year while traveling in China. I kicked myself for not finding it years sooner. It provided an encrypted proxy for google, exactly what I've always wanted. There is no viable alternative. StartingPage filters a lot of results. Duck Duck Go is okay, but I highly doubt it is as committed to storing as little information as Scroogle was. Tis a very sad day :(

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.google.com

Try it...

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

But - how do you know Scroogle was committed to storing little information? Because they said so?

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[tapspace]

I know. I do love handing over my deeply personal information to an international spying corporation.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[tapspace]

How do anyone does anything they claim to. Trust, brother, trust. And, google has 100% lost mine. I am working on a plan to ditch Gmail permanently, and I'll be done with google forever.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[oakgrove]

Slash dot: come for the nerdy news, stay for the complete off their rocker paranoid loon bags. I'll go pop some corn.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[MightyMartian]

That started happening the minute your router fetched an IP address.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[tapspace]

Well, aren't the slashtards on their high horse today? Every single word in my post is 100% accurate. If you don't believe that, it is your worldview that does not fit reality, not mine. Maybe the word "spying" was over the top, but not inaccurate. If you doubt that, you have to ask which one of us is delusional.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[tapspace]

Oh shit, that revealed something about my medical problems? Or, the things I look up in wikipedia? All this time I never knew.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[IAmGarethAdams]

Every word was accurate? So you actually *do* love handing your information over?

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[muckracer]

> StartingPage filters a lot of results.

Not sure if that's what you're referring to, but in the preferences (optionally saved as cookie or as bookmark'able URL hash) you can turn off filtering of search results.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I am working on a plan to ditch Gmail permanently

Wow. How long does it take?

idiot.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[1s44c]

How do anyone does anything they claim to. Trust, brother, trust. And, google has 100% lost mine. I am working on a plan to ditch Gmail permanently, and I'll be done with google forever.

Run your own mail server, it works for most of the old school slashdotters.

Anything else just leaves you open to the same abuse from a different company.

Re:Well, this seriously sucks

[tapspace]

(Score:0, Butthurt Mods)

Daniel Brandt is a loony

[Anonymous Coward]

Daniel Brandt is a loony. His first tussle with Google started about 10 years ago when he ran a conspiracy theory site and demanded to know why Google wouldn't show his site in the first page when people searched for famous people names. He attempted to start a movement to force Congress to make Google a public utility service and created google-watch! He created scroogle shortly after, to get back at google (it was nothing but a scraper of google results), and claimed that the back-end code was written in C for maximum speed. He even published the scroogle source code to prove it. I remember reading it then and it was a badly written CGI program with several buffer overflows (As a side note, the guy also seemed to be totally unaware of the overheads of running CGI scripts, whether written in C or any other language, or basics of tuning an Apache server. This explained why his site couldn't handle too many requests in the first place!)

Re:Daniel Brandt is a loony

[gmhowell]

That hardly scratches the surface. You haven't mentioned him stalking a wikipedia editor and serving time for said stunt.

Re:Daniel Brandt is a loony

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia editors are assholes, I don't blame him.

The Conspiracy theory wacko's you labeled and called all these vulgar slang psychopathic mind fuck names of yester year are the front and center of real conspiracy exposure today. They have in essence replaced fascist presstitute media and their propaganda with facts and sunlight.

Google wouldn't show his site in the first page when people searched for famous people names.

I had this problem too (more than once), so it's not like an uncommon problem.

So while you can call him loony, I can call you a jackass troll, what the fuck have you done for anyone.

God Bless what he tried to do.

Re:Daniel Brandt is a loony

[Disfnord]

Hilarious!

More greatness from DDoSing

[bwall]

Yay, script kiddies hurting the internet again! I love when I hear about a DDoS, it just makes me proud of all the hackers out there with SO MUCH SKILL that they can send a lot of SYN packets. Enough with the sarcasm. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS! If you want privacy, stop being immature.

Re:More greatness from DDoSing

[Anonymous Coward]

You stole my thunder! I was going to post a "this is why we can't have nice things" screed, but did a quick F3 first and found yours. +1 for you.

Why not

[bytesex]

make one of those browser plugins ? Like the one right next to the URL bar - they can make sure they don't send cookies, and in that way, Google can never throttle you - it's distributed !

Investigate

[stms]

Google Sharing it works great most of the time. I never used (or heard of) Scroogle but it would have be nice for when I don't have access to Firefox.

About Daniel Brandt

[tbird81]

http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/Daniel_Brandt

"I don't regard [Brandt] as a valid source about anything at all, based on my interactions with him. I tried very hard to help him, and he misrepresented nearly everything about our conversation in his very strange rant. He considers the very existence of a Wikipedia article about him to be a privacy violation, despite being a public person. I find it hard to take him very seriously at all. He misrepresents everything about our procedures, claiming that we have a 'secret police' and so on." - Jimbo Wales

Re:About Daniel Brandt

[jdogalt]

""I don't regard [Brandt] as a valid source about anything at all..." - Jimbo Wales"

That sounds like a cut and dry +5 perspective. But being the same sort of person as Daniel Brandt (or at least, I presume the same slashdot commenters calling him a looney would call me one as well), I decided to use non-google search engines, and results not already posted here, to try and make a real evaluation of D.B. I found a long thread he participated in, that was remarkably coherent, and intelligent, about his experiments reverse engineering how google works. Say what you will, but technically, on subjects he is passionate about, he comes off very well. In fact, he's so clever, all he had to do was throw in a bizarre offhand comment such as 'tighter than a bikini on a Bomis babe', and it inspired me to google that, and get this wired article, which IMO should negate the +5 of the parent comment. Jimmy Wales does not come off looking like such a valid source , after reading this- http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/12/69880

"Public edit logs reveal that Wales has changed his own Wikipedia bio 18 times, deleting phrases describing former Wikipedia employee Larry Sanger as a co-founder of the site.

Wales has also repeatedly revised the description of a search site he founded called Bomis, which included a section with adult photos called "Bomis Babes.""

Re:About Daniel Brandt

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I fail to understand why people need privacy on the Internet or feel offended when every evil mastermind tries to collect and collate the data they transmit in the clear.

Then why are you posting anonymously?

Re:About Daniel Brandt

[Anonymous Coward]

"Disregard that. I suck cocks." - Jimbo Wales

Tragic

[Anonymous Coward]

The free spirit of the Internet is being run roughshod over by scofflaws. And, yes, I do include Google in the category of scofflaw.

DuckDuckGo

[oldhack]

How are they (DDG) funding their operation then?

startpage.com keyword.URL entry for Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved the 100 results scroogle page when searching from the URLbar in Firefox. Here's the about:config value to set keyword.URL to:
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3C!DOCTYPE HTML%3E%3Chtml lang%3D"en"%3E%3Chead%3E%3Cmeta charset%3D"utf-8"%3E%3Ctitle%3ESearching...%3C%2Ftitle%3E%3C%2Fhead%3E%3Cbody onload%3D"document.blah.query.value%3Ddocument.getElementsByTagName('p')[0].firstChild.nodeValue%3Bdocument.blah.submit()"%3E%3Cform name%3D"blah" method%3D"post" action%3D"https%3A%2F%2Fstartpage.com%2Fdo%2Fsearch" onSubmit%3D"return do_action()%3B"%3E%3Cinput type%3D'hidden' name%3D'cat' value%3D'web'%3E%3Cinput type%3D'hidden' name%3D'cmd' value%3D'process_search'%3E%3Cinput type%3D'hidden' name%3D'language' value%3D'english'%3E%3Cinput type%3Dhidden name%3Dengine0 value%3D'v1all'%3E%3Cinput type%3D"hidden" name%3D"prf" id%3D"prf" value%3D"41cb91d7f8f0a768b8fd43160d6de1ad"%3E%3Cinput name%3D"query" type%3D"hidden"%3E%3C%2Fform%3E%3Cp style%3D"display%3Anone"%3E%3C%2Fbody%3E%3C%2Fhtml%3E
No cookies, no IP tracking, the preferences are in the form itself.

Fuck Google

[Baseclass]

Here's why

Too bad

[tgv]

I used to use scroogle: Google's search engine is ok, but their privacy policy isn't. But the throttling had become clear over the last two months, so I switched to duckduckgo, as many people. It's not quite google, and I can't "predict" its results as well as google's, but it's quite good, and has some nice features, such as the short content at the top of the page and the label "official site".

Try it, everyone!

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using duckduckgo lately and I like it. I have gottten this feeling over the last few years that using google is like being in a sandbox and "there must be more to the internet than this", it's like Google's results are limited in some way, and the same stuff over and over.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any i* products? Xbox? PS3? I'll bet you anything that all of their policies are equally "good" (and for sure the first is definitely worse)

Re:This is really low class

[MightyMartian]

You're taking the word of a renowned paranoid schizophrenic. In the Elder Ages of the Internet, Daniel would have been considered a netkook and would sit to such kookish illuminaries as Ed Conrad and Archimedes Plutonium.

The Perfect Search Engine

[Anonymous Coward]

The perfect engine:

- Is always https
- Performs absolutely zero logging
- Sets zero cookies
- Has zero ads

Re:The Perfect Search Engine

[IAmGarethAdams]

- would cost a lot of money to build
- has no way of reconciling that cost

Re:The Perfect Search Engine

[raynet]

It could be funded by EU, just to show that goverments sometimes, just sometimes, can make things work.

Re:The Perfect Search Engine

[Hatta]

You forgot:

-performs literal searches

setup your own

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the Seeks open source project (http://www.seeks-project.info/) to setup a public or your own scroogle... It's also P2P enabled so servers can share results. Scroogle was nice, but you can do it yourself easily now.

Re:setup your own

[mrclisdue]

Thank you, had never heard of this...

cheers,

Fravia search loares

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of good tips on searching,A good refresh course for many, ben around a wile.
Worth a menthion...

Kcim

Re:Fravia search loares

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.searchlores.org/tips.htm

I forgot link sorry,

Kcim

Sort of

[Anonymous Coward]

They had a toolbar, if you clicked the 'send anonymous statistics data to Microsoft to improve our services' button then it was supposed to send anonymous stats to MS. However it turned out they were scraping the queries you ran on Google and sending the whole lot, results, the search, what you clicked on etc. back to Microsoft.

And not anonymous data either. Detailed tracking data, and a unique id that can be used to de-anonymize you.

It was Carrier IQ in IE form.

To me what made it worse is they were unrepentant once caught. Pretending it wasn't copying because they took these 'signals' from many sites and the result was merged. Which is incredible face. They didn't even pretend not to be tracking their users, they were proud of it.

And no prosecution either, nobody chased them, too much clout in politics.

Re:Sort of

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS!! i really wish you didn't post AC so i could mod you up.

Re:Sort of

[Anonymous Coward]

They were tracking inputs to web forms (not just Google) and indexing the followed links from the results page. Google engineers deliberately used this behaviour to create a link between a nonesense word (for which there were no other signals) and a particular page and then kicked up a big stink. They went quiet when the truth came out.

Re:Sort of

[tqk]

i really wish you didn't post AC so i could mod you up.

Not to worry, AC. Others weren't so stupid as you. It's at +5 Insightful as I read it.

Re:This is really low class

[rk]

"Archimedes Plutonium" is a name I haven't heard in many many years. Good times. Thanks for the stroll down Memory Lane! I'll have to Google him and see if he's up to anything these days.

scroogle shuts down..

[Anonymous Coward]

guess it probably got 'scroooed'

StartPage / ixquick

[thereitis]

I've been using startpage.com exclusively for a couple of years now and I'm very happy with their service.

As referenced here, startpage was awarded the European Privacy Seal.

Does it matter if google "squeeze" their own

[nhat11]

competition that's using their own search engine? It's not like google is sueing them or anything or telling them to shutdown.

Alternative private search option

[Anonymous Coward]

An additional alternative private search option: http://www.faroo.com (p2p web search)

Must have been running linux

[Anonymous Coward]

DDoS actually made him "lose" the 7 servers. Windows server would have just required a reboot (at the most). I can imagine the linux server just completely locked up and started smoking. Then probably got caught in an endless fsck loop upon trying to boot it back up. Had a set of speakers been attached to it, it would have exploded the room with a mega-sonicboom at the logon screen. This is due to 15 layers of audio code running amok and a linear volume control with 3 settings. Loud, fucking loud, and mega-sonicboom loud.

And what did he expect stealing Google's search results? Now he is whining. There are a lot of other ways to ensure privacy when using a search engine. You also have the option of not using a search engine and relying on Web Rings and link sites (heh).

Re:Must have been running linux

[airdweller]

What are you talking about? "Losing" servers, "a reboot (at the most)", "a set of speakers attached to" a server, "a sonicboom at the logon screen"... Are you an idiot?

Daniel Brandt and Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm really saddened by this. I myself had a few tussles with Daniel before (I was very involved when he tried (unfortunately successfully)to get his Wikipedia entry deleted

I have no knowledge of this but a quick Googling brought up some serious abuse from a single website that I'm not going to link to. This reflects worse on the teenage aspies on Wikipedia than on Brandt.

"Daniel Brandt has been, in a way, trolled. Not by us, but by the ruthless hivemind of teenaged aspies at Wikipedia"

What did Brandt do to upset the ED people?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would like to know just what he did to upset the ED people though", 1s44c

Chip Berlet, SlimVirgin, and Wikipedia

Wikipedia's Hive Mind

Daniel Brandt on the Wikipedia Issue

Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services

YaCy P2P Web Search

[Anonymous Coward]

http://yacy.net/en/index.html

Ixquick

[Emrys01]

https://ixquick.com/