Only a hermit would not know of or be concerned about the new state of affairs wherein all the major communications companies have willingly cooperated with the NSA so that all our calls, emails, texts, credit usage, purchases - you name it - are recorded for use by dear Big Brother. Every single aspect of our meager lives.
Personally, I find this outrageous and agree that doing so is a complete trampling of the 4th amendment and our rights to be free from unreasonable searches, et al. But whether you agree or not...
There's Duck Duck Goose, er Go!
Perhaps the biggest violator of privacy is Google, who knows all about that porn you've viewed, the calls to your mistress, the taxes you avoid paying, where you store your most personal and private things, ad infinitum. It has been well said that if you read a person's searches you can pretty much figure them out. Yet Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, ATT and all the majors have pretty much provided an open backdoor for our good government friends who wish to record us.
Enter Duck Duck Go...
https://duckduckgo.com/
I recently discovered a new search engine in the news called, yup, Duck Duck Go. Unlike all the other engines it records nothing about you. Per the Guardian:
(Credit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ju ... berg-prism )"But this 20-person business offers what none of the big search engines do: zero tracking. It doesn't use cookies or store data about its users' IP addresses, doesn't offer user logins, and uses an encrypted connection by default. (Google provides an encrypted connection for logged-in users, but not automatically for non-logged in users.) If the NSA demanded data from DuckDuckGo, there would be none to hand over."
According to the Guardian and the founder, ever since the leaking of the Prism fiasco their searches doubled within days, and continue to grow rapidly as privacy seeking websurfers are flocking (pun intended) to his engine. Personally I love my privacy and my home is my private castle, off limits - absolutely - to the uninvited.
So DDG is now my default search engine, though I have Google standing by if needed. In addition to privacy, DDG is free of the ads, and the privileged position given to corporate subscribers. And because they are small enough, no has cared to figure out their search algorithms so the website coders who play games to be found and listed higher are gone!
Vanished!
Nope, what you get is pure and unadulterated, honest hits and information. All the junk and payola is gone. Highly recommended for purity and low cost, uh, free. Freedom, factual and free - pure and private...
*******
Special Note: Look in the bottom left of the DDG page for "About", and bottom right for "More". A very neat and entirely refreshing engine.