Ever do a search for something you wouldn’t have if your Gramma was going to access your search history? Ever accidentally hit “search” for the autofilled text in the search engine and get sent to something offensive? Ever wish you had an “undo search” button?
Well, as far as I know that’s not been created yet – but you can keep your accidental and/or on-purpose searches private from now on.
There are several search engines that do not collect data when you use them. I have personally used StartPage (owner of Ixquick), it took a bit of getting used to but I installed it as a search engine option then set it to be the default and it works great.
What are the types of things you should look for in a “safe” search engine?
- No recording of users’ IP addresses.
- No identifying cookies.
- No collection of personal data.
- No sharing personal data with third parties.
- Offering secure, encrypted connections (HTTPS/SSL)
- And a free proxy service that allows anonymous browsing of websites.
Kiim Komando recently published a post on three of her favorite options (one of which was Ixquick). You can review her article and decide what search engine suits your needs.
If privacy is important to you I’d suggest choosing one of these search engines – and keep your queries to yourself!