In this article, we'll provide a few tips and tricks on how to use a couple simple advanced web searches to browse a website without actually visiting the target site, effectively remaining invisible to the site's proprietors. Maybe the website is blocked on the computer you are using. Maybe the site seems somewhat sketchy and you want to check it out before you actually visit it. Maybe you want to read some content on the site, while depriving them of your own web traffic. Maybe you don't want the site's proprietors to know your IP address. Whatever the case may be, if you have access to Google, you may very well be able to see the content you are looking for without ever connecting to the site in question.
Showing posts with label search engines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search engines. Show all posts
Google's Green Growth: Search Engine Has Renewables In Their Tank
Google is absolutely not planning to hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button in regards to hoping the world's environmental problems will turn out alright. The company has announced that they will triple their purchase of clean energy over the next ten years.
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| It takes a lot of fuel to answer all the world's questions. (Image courtesy solarenergycanada.com.) |
Answers To All Of Your Searches: Now, You Can Download Your Entire Google History
As humans, it is an ineffable part of our nature to search. Searching for meaning, searching for love, searching for a place to call our own...we do love a good quest - sometimes, even if we don't really know what we're searching for. That fascination has only escalated with the advent of search engines, which require only mere, vague, and often strange commands to set us out onto our next journey. And now, all that you've searched for can be found again...
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| Search from your perch... (Image courtesy forum-politique.com.) |
The Question Of Invisibility: Google's Yearly Content Removal Request Report
The thing about dealing with information supergiants is that they not only have power over who sees your secrets and how, but they'll also discuss them when comprehensively covering what dirtier deeds than your own were begged to be scrubbed from the internet.
Such is the nature of Google's semiannual transparency report, another installation of which was released today. For the first time, this report included some 30 examples of material that had been expressly asked (mostly by government operatives) to vanish from the common knowledge, as though what was reported on was really actually bad enough to transcend the public's millisecond-length attention span.
According to newsweek.com, some of it really WAS bad enough that it could ruin lives simply by remaining in the public eye. Prison inmate abuse, serious sexual accusations, and purported "defamation" of numerous police officers were all included in the materials requested for removal. None of these requests were granted.
By Google's anaylsis, nearly 8,000 requests were made for information removal during 2013. These covered the e-extraordinary rendition of some 14,367 pieces of information. Requests were up 60% from 2012 to have one's secrets permanently kept that way (at least from the eyes of the internet.) The full transparency report including cases and actions taken is available for analysis.
The specific offending material varied, with governments making 1,066 requests for content be removed from blogs, 841 requests for removal from Google searches, and 765 requests to never again grace the screens of YouTube. These requests comprised the time period between July and December 2013 alone.
The most cited reason for the prospective purge was explained as "defamation" (36%), with nudity/obscenity (16%) and security (11%) also making excuses. Google was quick to admit that their report is not a full account of possible online censorship, but is a good metric in that "it does provide a lens on the things that governments and courts ask us to remove, underscoring the importance of transparency around the processes governing such requests.”
You can run, and you can rant, and sling all the press and televised mess you want, but you can't hide from the internet. Little Brother has just as many cameras and ears as Big Brother. The "embarrassing" (and maybe appropriately defamatory) results are more than elements of evidence: they are mirrors to our very society. A stark and honest appraisal of that image requires the full picture of our actions, no matter how ugly.
Such is the nature of Google's semiannual transparency report, another installation of which was released today. For the first time, this report included some 30 examples of material that had been expressly asked (mostly by government operatives) to vanish from the common knowledge, as though what was reported on was really actually bad enough to transcend the public's millisecond-length attention span.
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| There's a lot of skullduggery out there...removing the evidence is kind of a big job. (Image courtesy betanews.com.) |
According to newsweek.com, some of it really WAS bad enough that it could ruin lives simply by remaining in the public eye. Prison inmate abuse, serious sexual accusations, and purported "defamation" of numerous police officers were all included in the materials requested for removal. None of these requests were granted.
By Google's anaylsis, nearly 8,000 requests were made for information removal during 2013. These covered the e-extraordinary rendition of some 14,367 pieces of information. Requests were up 60% from 2012 to have one's secrets permanently kept that way (at least from the eyes of the internet.) The full transparency report including cases and actions taken is available for analysis.
The specific offending material varied, with governments making 1,066 requests for content be removed from blogs, 841 requests for removal from Google searches, and 765 requests to never again grace the screens of YouTube. These requests comprised the time period between July and December 2013 alone.
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| Unsurprisingly, people said and did a bunch of dumb stuff caught on Twitter too. (Image courtesy transparency.twitter.com.) |
The most cited reason for the prospective purge was explained as "defamation" (36%), with nudity/obscenity (16%) and security (11%) also making excuses. Google was quick to admit that their report is not a full account of possible online censorship, but is a good metric in that "it does provide a lens on the things that governments and courts ask us to remove, underscoring the importance of transparency around the processes governing such requests.”
You can run, and you can rant, and sling all the press and televised mess you want, but you can't hide from the internet. Little Brother has just as many cameras and ears as Big Brother. The "embarrassing" (and maybe appropriately defamatory) results are more than elements of evidence: they are mirrors to our very society. A stark and honest appraisal of that image requires the full picture of our actions, no matter how ugly.
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| So that's how that works! Thanks, transparency! (Image courtesy watchdog.org.) |
Ethically Hunt For Nudie Booty With New Search Engine "BoodieGo"
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Duck-Duck-Go Unveils Redesign
From the DuckDuckGo Blog:
Over the past year, as our userbase and community have grown substantially, we've heard great feedback from new and long-term users. Now, we'd like to show you how we've incorporated your feedback with a reimagined and redesigned DuckDuckGo:
https://next.duckduckgo.com/
This next version of DuckDuckGo focuses on smarter answers and a more refined look. We've also added many new features you've been requesting like images, auto-suggest, places and more. Of course, your privacy is protected as well!
Snowden Leaks Spurred Massive Growth at DuckDuckGo
When Gabriel Weinberg launched a search engine in 2008, plenty of people thought he was insane. How could DuckDuckGo, a tiny, Philadelphia-based startup, go up against Google? One way, he wagered, was by respecting user privacy. Six years later, we're living in the post-Snowden era, and the idea doesn't seem so crazy.
In fact, DuckDuckGo is exploding. Looking at a chart of DuckDuckGo's daily search queries, the milestones are obvious. A $3 million investment from Union Square Ventures in 2011. Just prior to that, a San Francisco billboard campaign. Inclusion in Time's 50 Best Websites of 2011. Each of these things moved the traffic needle for DuckDuckGo, but none of them came close to sparking anything like the massive spike in queries the company saw last July. That's when Edward Snowden first revealed the NSA's extensive digital surveillance program to the world. The little blue line on the chart hasn't stopped climbing north since.
Anti-Tracking, Anonymous Search Engines Bloom in Aftermath of Mass Surveillance Leaks
If you're not using a search engine such as Duck Duck Go, then it is very likely that the search engine you are using is tracking your every move. Search engines that value privacy and anonymity online are entering a boom following revelations of mass dragnet internet surveillance by government and business. From The Guardian:
Gabriel Weinberg noticed web traffic building on the night of Thursday 6 June – immediately after the revelations about the "Prism" programme. Through the programme, the US's National Security Agency claimed to have "direct access" to the servers of companies including, crucially, the web's biggest search engines – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Within days of the story, while the big companies were still spitting tacks and tight-lipped disclaimers, the search engine Weinberg founded – which pledges not to track or store data about its users – was getting 50% more traffic than ever before. That has gone up and up as more revelations about NSA and GCHQ internet tapping have come in.
"It happened with the release by the Guardian about Prism," says Weinberg, right, a 33-year-old living in Paoli, a suburb of Philadelphia on the US east coast. "We started seeing an increase right when the story broke, before we were covered in the press." From serving 1.7m searches a day at the start of June, it hit 3m within a fortnight.
Yet you've probably never heard of DuckDuckGo.
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