StartPage vs. Duckduckgo: Which do you prefer?

...and why. My concern is the issue of tracking my searches. I want to avoid, Google, Chrome & Bing.

I'll start the ball rolling by saying that there may be a fair number of folks who, like me, have not come across StartPage before, whereas the great majority will at least know of DuckDuckGo. So comparisons of actual usage and experience may be limited.

I have a somewhat ambivalent view of "Search Tracking". I dislike the principle, but live with the actuality for most of my searches - I use Google. It's fast and usually very reliable.

Where I consider something to be more sensitive, I use DuckDuckGo - and if even more sensitive, I use DuckDuckGo via Opera and its free VPN.

I don't care very much for the DuckDuckGo UI, but what the heck, it's a search engine. It is not as reliable, in my hands anyway, when it comes to searching for scientific and medical articles which occupy a lot of my time.

That's my meagre contribution until I research and review the possibilities that StartPage might have to offer.

Ian

IWT said:

I'll start the ball rolling by saying that there may be a fair number of folks who, like me, have not come across StartPage before, whereas the great majority will at least know of DuckDuckGo. So comparisons of actual usage and experience may be limited.

I have a somewhat ambivalent view of "Search Tracking". I dislike the principle, but live with the actuality for most of my searches - I use Google. It's fast and usually very reliable.

Where I consider something to be more sensitive, I use DuckDuckGo - and if even more sensitive, I use DuckDuckGo via Opera and its free VPN.

I don't care very much for the DuckDuckGo UI, but what the heck, it's a search engine. It is not as reliable, in my hands anyway, when it comes to searching for scientific and medical articles which occupy a lot of my time.

That's my meagre contribution until I research and review the possibilities that StartPage might have to offer.

Ian

Click to expand...

Thanks Ian.

Consider this.

Say you use Duck Duck Go as your search engine, all nice and secure. Then you select a link, and bang you are being tracked. As soon as you hit tghe 'net assume you are being tracked. Your ISP can also track and sell your information.

You might be interested in a VPN if your privacy is a concern:-


http://www.techsono.com/usenet/faq/avoid-ip-address-tracking

harryb2448 said:

Consider this.

Say you use Duck Duck Go as your search engine, all nice and secure. Then you select a link, and bang you are being tracked. As soon as you hit tghe 'net assume you are being tracked. Your ISP can also track and sell your information.

You might be interested in a VPN if your privacy is a concern:-


http://www.techsono.com/usenet/faq/avoid-ip-address-tracking

Click to expand...

Thanks Harry.

I have used DuckDuckGo for some time now. 95% of the time I find I like what it comes up with just fine. Every now and then I jump to Google to compare and I occasionally get a better set of results but it is rare. What I do like - besides the no track feature - is knowing the first two or three search results are not paid ads.

As for StartPage, I have only dabbled with it but it seems very similar to DuckDuckGo.

Lisa

Currently I am using Vivaldi as my default browser and both StartPage and DuckDuck Go are options in the search box. As with most browsers you can quickly decide which search engine you would like to use for which search.

If you want to eliminate the the scenario mentioned by harryb2448 you will need to use a Tracker Blocker such as Ghostery which this forum recommends. But that is still not enough because your browsing habits are also logged by your ISP. To avoid that you need a no logging VPN.

Personally I use both which makes which search engine I use somewhat redundant but I like DuckDuck Go because of the results I get and as Lisa mentions above.

See; http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...t-isps-sell-your-data-without-consent-n742316

Backlighting said:

...and why. My concern is the issue of tracking my searches. I want to avoid, Google, Chrome & Bing.

Click to expand...

I've used and compared both. DuckDuckGo is a decent search engine, but not as good as using Google. StartPage is Google's search engine with all of the tracking stuff eliminated, so you get all the advantages of using Google, with none of the tracking. (StartPage relays your search query to Google after striping out your location and other info.) It's a win-win.

StartPage (free)
https://www.startpage.com/

The thing is, being tracked by your search engine is the least of your worries. Far more worrisome is the possibility of being hacked by someone while using a public Wi-Fi channel at someplace like a coffee shop. You can deal with that by using a VPN (virtual private network) which encrypts your data from your computer to your source, and vice versa. The free Opera browser has a free VPN built-in (and is a very nice browser in its own right):

Opera (free)
http://www.opera.com/

Unfortunately those are not your only potential concerns. Your ISP knows a lot about your surfing habits even if you use a VPN. And recently our own lovely government here in the U.S. decided that it's just fine for ISP's to gather data about our browsing habits and sell it. If you are really concerned about your privacy on the Web, you may want to use the TOR network to do your Web surfing. The TOR network is made up of a world-wide network of relay servers. TOR bounces your connection between these servers randomly, making it impossible to track you. You can download TOR software to use with any browser,

https://www.torproject.org/

but much easier is to just use this free browser that uses the TOR network automatically whenever you surf the Web.

TOR browser (free)
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

Anticipating the next question, none of the above mentioned products does it all. If you really don't want anyone to know what you are doing on the Internet, and you want to protect your data as best as possible, you need all three things: a non-tracking search engine, a VPN, and you should use the TOR network.