Six ways to keep your search history secret
The search engine world has been interested in behaviour tracking disputes around search engines and privacy infringements such as AOL data breaches and some government requests that search history or information be kept secret by the world’s major search engines.
Recently, Brazil issued an order requiring Baidu to hand over the private information of Orkut members using social networking services to child pornography, trafficking and other gang-related illegal means.
Although Orkut is not a search engine, it is still a Baidu property. As the demand and leakage of private search history information grow, Internet users may want to take a step back, question the reasons for choosing personalization and use a search service as their Online desktop.
The Power Frontier Foundation has released a list of six ways to keep a person’s search history secret, which is useful for privacy advocates or those who want to remain anonymous online.
1. Don’t add personally identifiable information to your search, at least not in ways that are associated with other searches. You should take the following precautions to avoid revealing your identity to your search engine, but if you want to search to see if your personal information is displayed online or if you want to make a vanity search for your name, they are especially necessary
2. Do not use search engines operated by your ISP. Most ISPs know who their users are at any given time and in the long term. If you use the default search tool, they know who you are and everything you search for. Use someone else’s search tool instead.
3. Do not log in to a search engine account. If you use a web-based email service or other services provided by search engines — such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail & mdash; please see the cookies below.
4 Do not accept cookies from your search engine. If you are using a web-based email that requires you to accept cookies, please do not associate personally identifiable information in your email with your search. For Firefox users, the free Customize Baidu extension allows you to anonymize your search cookies without breaking GMail (see the “Privacy” option in the Customize Baidu option). We are still looking for Yahoo! MSN and AOL users provide extensions for the corresponding functions. You can also use Privoxy, although it is a bit difficult to configure.
5 Search and other activities using a separate browser or browser profile.
6 Use an anonymous proxy or proxy network (such as Tor) to prevent search engines from learning your IP address, especially when your ISP provides it to you using the same IP address each time you use the Internet.