InformAction Forums

[quote="Tom T."]Update: In another thread, a user reminded me of another privacy-aware search engine that I used to use, but had forgotten about: Ixquick.
https://www.ixquick.com/[/quote]
Since this was re-opened, it's a good time to tell of an even better alternative to Google than Ixquick.
https://startpage.com

It's the same people as Ixquick, but with Google results added to their own search results. Same superior privacy policy.

Thanks to Giorgio for keeping Google surrogates up-to-date.
Or we could all use other search engines, and not be concerned about surrogates. ;)

Fixed in [url=http://noscript.net/getit#devel]latest development build[/url] 2.4rc1, thanks.

Confirmed. Current Nightly breaks Surrogates (all them). A work around is on its way.

This surrogate doesn't work anymore in Nightly because requestpolicy show a 302 redirect. With Firefox 12 it works well

Update: In another thread, a user reminded me of another privacy-aware search engine that I used to use, but had forgotten about: Ixquick.
https://www.ixquick.com/

[url=https://www.ixquick.com/eng/protect-privacy.html]Privacy policy[/url]

[quote="kukla"]...block Google cookies; as always, keep using NS. [/quote]
If I ever have to confront the gorilla, of course it's with no cookies, bananas, or scripting. You might be interested in [url=http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8319]this thread[/url] about using ABE to disallow any Google scripting anywhere except for their reCaptcha and Maps functions.
[quote] Except they do seem to know my IP. [/quote]
Every website you visit has to know *an* IP, else, how will they know where to send the page?
(Yes, moderators can see yours, to be able to ban spammers, but it would be unethical to disclose it publicly.)
Some people use proxies or TOR to shield their real IP. A personal choice for each user.

Depending on your ISP, your own IP may be changed periodically, or you can force changes in various ways. Thus throwing enough variables at them to dilute the value of what's compiled under a single IP. If mine changes, presumably the old one was given to someone else, whose browsing habits, search queries, etc. are probably very different from mine. (Assuming DHCP and not a static IP, which DSL usually is, at least where I am.)

This was what was so great about Scroogle. They stripped off your IP and substituted theirs in the request to Google, retrieved it, and sent it back to your IP. So all Google saw was the pool of Scroogle IPs. If they could have afforded to have more than six (IIRC) servers/IPs, maybe the bump in traffic would have fallen underneath Google's radar. Or rotated IPs of their requests to Google ...
[quote] I've taken it one step further and added Google HTTPS to search engines.[/quote]
Agree -- if we have to face the monster, might as well keep the other monsters out of the fight, and use only https, never http.

Simple solution for when I want to use the 800 lb gorilla: block Google cookies; as always, keep using NS. Result: no annoying instant or previews and no tracking, either from JS redirects or cookies. Except they do seem to know my IP. I guess I can live with that. I've taken it one step further and added Google HTTPS to search engines.

I see that one of my previous alternates, Exalead, was acquired by Dassault Systems in 2010, and doesn't seem so consumer-friendly anymore.

I've been able to find what I needed with Duck, but I suppose the 800-lb. gorilla grabs the most bananas. :roll:
Perhaps if masses of users started using alternates like Duck, these others could enhance their own crawlers, indexers, etc.

Or Scroogle could restart, with a rotating proxy system or something?
Classified ad: Web searchers seek rich person with desire to support Web privacy. 8-)

Sorry to hear that report. But you can still try the privacy-friendly one(s) first, and then, if and only if, use G**g** if not enough results.
Crossing fingers and hoping...

Cheers.
[img]http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-eatdrink004.gif[/img]

Thanks Tom, unfortunately, the thing is unless you do a Google search, you won't know what you're missing. For example, the search, "why is leopard so expensive site:discussions.apple.com." With Duck, the only hit you get is for a thread from 2010. With Google, you get that one plus a quite recent one from 3/1/2012, which is the one I knew existed and was trying to find again. Startpage had one hit and that was completely out of left field.

I wish it were otherwise, but the privacy invading monstrosity that Google is is just better.

[quote="kukla"] .... it's a PITA to have to duplicate my searches using both. Duck doesn't get its results from Google, while Startpage allegedly does, but Google doesn't always feed it the same results....[/quote]
Check Duck's Settings page. By default, it chose my region (USA), filtered suspected adult sites (your choice), and some other things that may result in fewer search results.

IIUC, they search via Yahoo, Bing, and some of their own capability, and perhaps other sources (Wikipedia? IIRC).

See if making the search settings less restrictive doesn't help. I've been using Duck alone, and it's always been sufficient so far.

[quote="Tom T."]Or one could just use a search engine that respects ones' privacy in the first place.

Check out https://duckduckgo.com/html

Search plugins are available at [url=https://addons.mozilla.org/]Firefox Add-ons[/url].[/quote]
I wish it were that simple. I've been using Startpage and DuckDuckgo. They sometimes complement each other, but it's a PITA to have to duplicate my searches using both. Duck doesn't get its results from Google, while Startpage allegedly does, but Google doesn't always feed it the same results. Too bad Google has turned into such a privacy headache.

Or one could just use a search engine that respects ones' privacy in the first place.

Check out https://duckduckgo.com/html

Search plugins are available at [url=https://addons.mozilla.org/]Firefox Add-ons[/url].

That's great Giorgio. Thanks. Never knew that. (I wouldn't have been asking about Redirect Remover if I did!) NoScript is the best!

[quote="kukla"]Is it possible the scriptless tracking surrogate feature is doing this?[/quote]
The surrogate preventing the omousedown handler from adding the tracking code predates the one for scriptless pages, because the onmousedown mechanism is way older and already handled by NoScript.

When Google started hardcoding the tracking redirect in scriptless pages I added a second surrogate for them (hence my reply stating it was meant for non-JS links only), but later I consolidate the two into one single surrogate which handles both the cases.

Bringing back this thread because I've just discovered that NoScript is scrubbing not only the [u]non-JavaScript[/u] Google tracking links (i.e. those with Google not allowed), but the JavaScript enabled links generated at mousedown, i.e. [u]those with Google allowed as well[/u]. I've demonstrated this with NS disabled and right-clicking and copying the link. With NS disabled, a copied link location in a search results page is showing the long tracking string. With NS enabled and Google allowed, the copied link location is scrubbed.

Is it possible the scriptless tracking surrogate feature is doing this, or, maybe, some other mechanism in NoScript? Perhaps I should mention that I'm running OS X 10.6.8, since the platform may have something to do with this.

I'm puzzled, since Giorgio had replied that this was meant only to scrub the non-JS links.

I'm not complaining, I'm pleasantly surprised. But would like to understand what about NS is responsible for this.

Perhaps someone can replicate this behavior?