Stop giving away your privacy!

a reply to: VoidHawk

I've also been using StartPage and as a secondary, DuckDuckGo is okay. I cringe at the private medically related searches I've typed into Google in the past. I would be humiliated if it got out like what happened to AOL users. No one's business but mine and some Google tech could swoop right in and know all these things about me.

a reply to: rukia

I think you're on the right track, advertising targeting is annoying at best but I'm not so sure about invasive. There are obvious exceptions to that rule, just like there are obvious exceptions to any other thing that is. What is amusing is that people think by using "private search engines" that they can't be traced. Your connection still exists at the router, it still exists at the ISP, and it still has to generate a sessions when it visits the search engine. That's how websites work. Has nothing to do with "privacy" - there's a certain set of variables that are always collected.

Did you provide an email when you joined ATS?
Do you post on ATS using the internet?

If you answer yes to either of these, you aren't off the grid. It has nothing to do with who owns ATS, your data is on the net. ATS takes a lot of time to secure the information on their servers - that's true, but so do other entities on the web. Almost every site out there uses cookies too, in order to cater the appearance of the site and make sure you don't have to login all the time. They're not all tracking you.

Bottom line is that unless you're a hacker - and a damn fine one at that - once you hit connect: you're on the grid.