4 search engines that promise to protect your privacy

Don’t want your search engine to remember everything you type? Try these privacy focused alternatives.

Google is the gold standard when it comes to search, but if you’re using their tools, you’re being tracked in lots of different ways.

Here’s a look at four search engines that promise a more private browsing experience.

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OneSearch

Verizon, the company that bought Yahoo, has a new site called OneSearch.

It promises not to track, store or share your personal data with advertisers.

They also encrypt your search terms and results expire after an hour. This means if someone looked at your browser history and clicked the links, they wouldn’t reveal what you searched for.

Search results are from Bing and there are ads, they’re just more generic than what Google might serve up.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a well known search engine with an emphasis on privacy.

It doesn’t store your search history and doesn’t track you across the web.

DuckDuckGo uses its own blend of search results, incorporating over 400 sources, aka, the results might not be as good as Google.

Startpage.com

If you’re looking for the quality of Google search results but still want to protect your privacy, check out Startpage.com.

It bills itself as the world’s most private search engine and doesn’t collect personally identifiable data as you use it.

Startpage.com has a nifty feature that lets you visit any website secretly with a feature called ‘anonymous view.’ It puts a proxy between you and the site, so even if it tried to track you it can’t’. For example, this means you can browse products on a shopping site and not have them follow you around the internet in the form of ads.

Qwant

Qwant is based in France and promises privacy along with  unbiased search results.

Europe is known for having some of the strictest privacy laws on record. Qwant says it doesn’t record your searches and doesn’t use your personal data for advertising.

You can even store your search preferences without creating an account by dragging a special bookmark to your toolbar.

Want to switch to a new default search engine? Here’s how:

On iPhone:

Settings > Safari > Search Engine

On Android:

Open Chrome > Menu (three little dots in upper right hand corner) > Settings > Search Engine

On Chrome Desktop:

Settings > Search Engine > Manage Search Engines

Search in the box for the search engine of your choice (you will have to visit the site at least once for it to show up as an option) then hit the 3 little dots next to its name and choose “Make Default.”

Now: Listen to the latest Rich on Tech Podcast, where I talk about the tech stories I think you should know about and answer the questions you send me!