Bing or Google or Yahoo or something else?

[Rich Engelhardt]

What's the search engine du jour?
I've been using Google for years ever since switching over to it from Alta Vista (shows you how long that's been!)
Is Bing any better?
I hate to support Microsoft any more now that my professional ties to them have been severed, so, I've been avoiding using Bing.
If it's more robust than Google though, I'll make the shift.

[Ralph Boumenot]

IMO Google is still the top rung of the ladder with Bing down in bottom rungs somewhere.

[Curt Harms]

Nothing says you are required to use only one. I don't use Bing for similar reasons but Google seems to have search mastered. There are privacy concerns re Google but nothing says I have to disclose my identity and nothing says I can't delete their cookies periodically. I don't use Gmail or other google services though some do seem to be best-of-breed. I believe (not certain) that Microsoft/Bing powers Yahoo search. I've gotten pretty good results from ask.com though they're reputed to be privacy intrusive as well. I don't install anyone's toolbar.

[Matt Meiser]

I've been trying Bing a little to see what the hype is about. Can't say its better, can't say its bad. I'm in no rush to switch other than that I'd like to find something decent to replace my iGoogle page since iGoogle is going away.

I'm with you--used Alta Vista until someone showed me Google which was still in its infancy at the time and I haven't looked back.

[Paul McGaha]

I use Google. I'm happy with it.

PHM

[Howard Garner]

Try Dogpile

Howard G

[Mike Circo]

Google gets me what I need quick, and that's it's purpose. I've tried Bing and like the pretty pictures on their main page, but the results are no better, and maybe worse. However I do prefer Bing's maps. More accurate routes, easier to see graphics, and the "Birds Eye" view is sweet when trying to find a place. (Yes, Google has similar things, but Bing's seems more functional to me.)

[Charles Wiggins]

I've been using Google for years ever since switching over to it from Alta Vista (shows you how long that's been!)

I used to teach this stuff to college students back when a lot of people didn't even know what a search engine was. Before Google came around Altavista was among the best. Did you ever try Altavista's Raging Search? It was designed specifically to compete with Google and the first to be touted as a "Google killer." It died along with Altavista.


Is Bing any better?

I have a colleague you loves Bing, but for my purposes, no. Other than the cool background that changes every day I don't get much out of Bing. Part of that is that I am already so steeped in the Googleverse that trying to adapt to another SE is like going from a PC to a Mac (Another more pressing challenge in my immediate future). I just don't know how to make Bing do all that Google does and I don't care to learn at this point.

Even on simple searches Bing does not deliver for me. I've seen the Bing-it-on challenge commercials and I have done my own test of each SE and Google stomps Bing every time. Example: I searched for "steak" and Bing brought up only 2 local restaurants and completely missed the Ryan's steak house less than a mile away. So I tried "pizza". Bing's results were better than on the "steak" search, but it still missed the Pizza Hut. Both of theose restaurants have been in their current locations for years.

If you compare the two search results for "myocardial infarction" attached, you see that Google did slightly better. Both had Wikipedia as the top results (shutter!), but the number two for Google is the very authoritative Mayo Clinic, it's number 4 on Bing. Also if you look at the sidebar result the definition on Google is from the National Library of Medicine, whereas Bing uses Wikipedia (again, shutter!).

259438259439

But as Curt points out, there is no law saying you cannot use more than one SE.

Happy searching!
Charles

[John Coloccia]

I use DuckDuckGo because I'm tired of getting tracked everywhere I go and I'm tired of the skewed searches. Odds are good that if you and I type in the very same search terms into google, we will get completely different results. It's a little social engineering game that they're playing, and it also makes finding what you want very difficult. Google has become useless as a search engine, just an an encyclopedia with skewed information depending on the reader is also useless.

[Caspar Hauser]

+1 for DuckDuckGo.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I use Google...and Mamma

[David Weaver]

I use DuckDuckGo because I'm tired of getting tracked everywhere I go and I'm tired of the skewed searches. Odds are good that if you and I type in the very same search terms into google, we will get completely different results. It's a little social engineering game that they're playing, and it also makes finding what you want very difficult. Google has become useless as a search engine, just an an encyclopedia with skewed information depending on the reader is also useless.

Is it safe to assume google is tracking you regardless of what search engine you're using? At least once you've logged in once to google and they have a tracking cookie?

You're right about the tailored results, though. I don't know how many times I've seen the goofy ad from sharpening supplies where the guy is hawking strops. He's probably a nice guy (and I've bought from them before), but I'm getting tired of seeing ads. Oh, and the hair loss ads. I don't even have hair loss, are they guessing by my age?

[Chuck Wintle]

Is it safe to assume google is tracking you regardless of what search engine you're using? At least once you've logged in once to google and they have a tracking cookie?

You're right about the tailored results, though. I don't know how many times I've seen the goofy ad from sharpening supplies where the guy is hawking strops. He's probably a nice guy (and I've bought from them before), but I'm getting tired of seeing ads. Oh, and the hair loss ads. I don't even have hair loss, are they guessing by my age?
google logs every search made using the google search engine and i assume the same is done with other search engines...there is no real anonymity on the internet

[Steve Schlumpf]

Never heard of DuckDuckGo but decided to give it a try. Chuck - do a search on DuckDuckGo, it is supposed to be private.

[David Weaver]

Right, but what I was getting at was that there are definitely sites that track what you're doing even when you're not using their services. Facebook "accidentally" had a tracking cookie that was installed for users who had opted out of such things a while ago. They "fixed" it. I'm sure they'll have another accident when they want data badly enough.

Whether google does that to, I don't know, but with data about your behavior and my behavior comes revenue and the ability to market more precise services to advertisers (which means more money per ad). I doubt that they can resist.

[Cary Falk]

I stopped using Bing when they stopped paying me to shop for tools. I hate Google. I use Yahoo. It brings me what I want to see not what somebody pays google for me to see.

[Brian Elfert]

I stopped using Bing when they stopped paying me to shop for tools. I hate Google. I use Yahoo. It brings me what I want to see not what somebody pays google for me to see.

Yahoo got out of the search engine business a number of years ago. They use Bing as the search engine on their page.

[David Weaver]

This is what I'm talking about regarding google. You'd have to be born pretty late in the night last night to believe it exists only for one or two platforms and that they're not doing it at any given time. The incentives are too great, and the laws in the US must not be as clear as they are in europe. This is 1+ year old news now, but it's just the safari iteration, I never even heard about this one.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/17/google-caught-tracking-safari-users/

[Stephen Tashiro]

You're right about the tailored results, though. I don't know how many times I've seen the goofy ad from sharpening supplies where the guy is hawking strops. He's probably a nice guy (and I've bought from them before), but I'm getting tired of seeing ads. Oh, and the hair loss ads. I don't even have hair loss, are they guessing by my age?

A solution of sorts for ads is to be a big-time Amazon.com customer. Most pages I visit prominently feature products I recently browsed on Amazon.

[Cary Falk]

Yahoo got out of the search engine business a number of years ago. They use Bing as the search engine on their page.
Interesting. I did not know that.

[David G Baker]

I use Bing and have for quite a while and like it better than all of the others I have used. If I want a broad search I use Dogpile. I found that Bing doesn't shove searches at me like the others have in the past and the results of my searches are more relevant on Bing.

[John Coloccia]

This is what I'm talking about regarding google. You'd have to be born pretty late in the night last night to believe it exists only for one or two platforms and that they're not doing it at any given time. The incentives are too great, and the laws in the US must not be as clear as they are in europe. This is 1+ year old news now, but it's just the safari iteration, I never even heard about this one.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/17/google-caught-tracking-safari-users/

That's why you turn off all of your cookies with Firefox. I only allow a handful of sites to store cookies.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Google here, and I don't mind that they track my activities. It gives a different experience on the web that I like, I don't have to see adds for junk that I will never buy. Adds are everywhere, if you are going to see them, why not at least have them targeted?

Tried Bing unintentionally with my new office computer a month ago. It is so deeply imbedded in the software that it is a pain to get rid of. I hate being forced to use it because my computer has a windows operating system. It's gone now, and good riddance. I want a choice, not be forced into a particular piece of software.

Google's toolbars are nice, I like that I can log in on any of my 5 computers, see my gmail, the bookmarks follow, and the same stuff is on each. I like google.

That all being said, I don't understand the privacy remarks. Nothing is private on the internet, everything is also recorded someplace, and anything you do can be found multiple ways. Why does it matter then that google uses your searches to tailor adds? The only solution to that is unplug.

[Brian Elfert]

I still use Google. I also use Google Apps for email for my domain. (The free version of Google Apps before Google started charging new users.) My mail is actually forwarded from there to another account so I rarely log into my Google web mail. I always log out when done so Google can't track me as easily.

I'm wondering how DuckDuckGo pays the bills? They only run a limited number of ads compared to Google and Bing. If they truly aren't tracking you then they can't do data mining. It appears that DuckDuckGo has a partnership with Yahoo, but Yahoo uses Bing for search so in a roundabout way DuckDuckGo is using Bing.

I've tried both Bing and Google for the same search a few times. I got about 50 times as many results on Google for some of the searches. Now, maybe most of the results on Google were not relevant.

[David Weaver]

That all being said, I don't understand the privacy remarks. Nothing is private on the internet, everything is also recorded someplace, and anything you do can be found multiple ways. Why does it matter then that google uses your searches to tailor adds? The only solution to that is unplug.

It's an ethical issue, because of things like the story I linked above. I'd rather not help support their efforts. That doesn't mean someone else doesn't do it, too (like facebook obviously did - I don't use facebook, but my wife does). But if I know someone is engaged in that kind of stuff, then I'd rather not patronize their services.

[Brian Elfert]

One thing I absolutely hate are the ads that follow you everywhere. I search for some obscure thing that I would never buy and then every website I go to gives me an ad for that product.

[John Coloccia]

Why does it matter then that google uses your searches to tailor adds?
Because they not only tailor adds but they tailor the SEARCH RESULTS too, which means they push certain information on you, and block you from seeing other information, and this is especially harmful when people are trying to find information during elections, as an example. At best, results which they believe you agree with will be pushed on you so you see no dissenting opinion, and at worst they push their own agenda, whatever that may be. That's just one example.


The only solution to that is unplug.
No, we've already given at least several other solutions, including different search engines and blocking cookies from all but trusted sites. Sitting on a server and theoretically able to be found via search warrant is much different than actively being used to steer my thinking and to try and separate me from my money.

[Brian Elfert]

That's why you turn off all of your cookies with Firefox. I only allow a handful of sites to store cookies.

Sure, you can do that, but many websites simply will refuse to allow to use the site without cookies. I guess one could avoid any site that required cookies to be enabled, but that eliminates a whole lot of websites. Even Sawmill Creek uses a cookie to remember your login settings if you so choose.

One version of Internet Explorer didn't allow cookies by default. Our corporate help desk got quite a few calls after that version was rolled out because many websites didn't work after that.

[John Coloccia]

Sure, you can do that, but many websites simply will refuse to allow to use the site without cookies. I guess one could avoid any site that required cookies to be enabled, but that eliminates a whole lot of websites. Even Sawmill Creek uses a cookie to remember your login settings if you so choose.

One version of Internet Explorer didn't allow cookies by default. Our corporate help desk got quite a few calls after that version was rolled out because many websites didn't work after that.
In my experience, it's only a handful...and really only one main one that I know of: Facebook. I can't think of any site that I regularly visit that forces me to use cookies.

SMC is one of the handful of sights I allow to store cookies. It's not about the cookie. It's about my control over who's tracking me and why. Have you ever looked at your cookies? I'll bet you have thousands of them. There's really no reason for it in 99% of the cases.

Anyhow, do what you want. If you don't care, then you don't care. If you do care, there are things you can do. The Google story a while back was stunning. They have no problem "exploiting" a flaw in a browser in order to get around the user's preferences. We used to call this hacking. This is only what they got caught doing. What else are they doing, and what else are they doing with your information? If they're willing to hack a browser in order to go against your explicit wishes, what else are they doing that they simply haven't been caught at yet?

Or maybe does anyone remember when their street view map GPS vehicles were collecting WiFi data from any network that came into range? They claimed that was an accident too. Who accidentally does that? Nobody, that's who...at least not until you get caught. Their official excuse: "Oh, we meant to ONLY record SSID and MAC addresses and accidentally recorded the payload". The payload is the actual information, BTW. Whatever. Even if it was unintentional, it's not accidental. It's careless, plain and simple. What else are they careless with? Why are they recording MAC addresses with their GPS mobiles in the first place? So when I do something online they can correlate it to my actual street address? I wonder what happened to all of that data data, and I wonder how much junk mail and unwanted telemarketers call your house based on web activity?

Google, IMHO, is as sleazy and slimy as they come.

edit: Just want to add that I know how MAC addresses work. Their usefulness, or anonymity in this case, is all dependent on WHERE you're collecting the information. They've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar enough times to be very suspicious. I wonder what's floating around in Chrome as part of the bits and pieces that WEREN'T released as open source, and I also wonder how much of the open source code has been replaced.

[Ole Anderson]

If you are concerned about privacy, with IE go to the tools gear icon, choose Safety and choose InPrivate browsing. Seems to help me avoid them following my every move. You loose all of the toolbars, but if you type Google in the address, their site will pop up. You can still use all of your favorites. I haven't tried any of the other choices such as Tracking Protection.

"InPrivate Browsing helps prevent Internet Explorer from storing data about your browsing session. This includes cookies, temporary Internet files, history, and other data. Toolbars and extensions are disabled by default. See Help for more information."

[Lornie McCullough]

My preference is emphatically for duckduckgo.com. I use other search engines as needed, but with an acute awareness that they are tracking and collecting information.

I also use Linux exclusively, and encourage and mentor all my friends to do so.

I find John Coloccia's comments in this thread to be the most perceptive, and 'on the money'. But as he says..... you get to do whatever you want.

Lornie

ps... firefox and adblock improve one's browsing experience.

[Scott Shepherd]

I had a conversation with a friend several months ago, talking about google glass. He thought it was great, I thought it was a terrifying leap right over the cliff for privacy. He didn't see any harm at all. I let him know that a stranger could look at his child, get his kids names, parents names, addresses, things they do for fun, etc., all in seconds. That would allow someone with bad intentions to go up to a kid they had never seen, tell them their father or mothers name, tell them they were sent by their mother to get them, and bam, the kid is gone, all because you thought it was "cool".

I know a lot of people dismiss privacy issues. I'd encourage those that easily dismiss them to spend a little time reading about what's going on and what's right around the corner. You are about to be filmed everywhere you go, without your permission. That's what google glass is going to be able to do. I'm not talking about filmed walking into a bank, or walking the streets downtown, but rather anywhere you go. To eat, drink, play. Everywhere. To me, that's terrifying to think you can be filmed by strangers without your permission, and then that footage can be used for whatever they want to use it for.

[Rich Engelhardt]

You are about to be filmed everywhere you go, without your permission.I believe we're still quite a bit away from that @ this point.
As near as I can figure, standard definition video uses roughly 1 GB of storage for every 60 min. of recording.
While it's possible today......there's still a wide margin of "safety in numbers".
For the present - we're still dealing with storage at the TB level.
At a rate of roughly 1GB of storage required for evey 60 min of standard definition video, you're looking at 8.7 TB of storage to capture 1 year of video per individual.

My best guess-timate would be roughly 5 to 7 years before (affordable) storage capacity reaches the point to make something like that practical.

That also makes the huge assumption that video definition stays where it's at now and standard definition is still acceptable.
Something could easily come along to obsolete standard definition and make HD the bare minimum.

Besides that - anyone that has a desire to video me 7x24x365 is really pretty hard up for something to do. ;)
How many people want to watch a fat old man lay around the house all day like a giant lizzard sunning itself :D


I do happen to agree though that the time is coming when our every move is going to be captured on video by someone....
Almost all the pieces are in place - it's just a matter of tieing them all together & finding some way to store it all.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Ok, I get that some of us have different privacy thresholds than others, which is I think where this conversation has lead. Scott, google glass wouldn't be required to do what you described. Any resourceful nutjob could figure it out multiple ways. I think it's a fallacy to pick a particular piece of technology as good or bad based on what you think could happen, when it is not the only way to make it happen.

John's example of filtering search engine results during an election is valid. It's been done for years though, the coverage of politics has been skewed to match a networks bias for as long as there have been networks. This is a regime change we are experiencing, the internet has become the source of news for many of us, and with it comes a different way to find our info. The good thing is, it's all out there, we only have to go find it. A prism of common sense is required though, for example, don't trust a moveon.org story to be an unbiased view of a conservative politician.

Seriously, nearly everything us humans do is about money. Shockingly enough, even the internet. As always, follow the money to learn biases.

As for the privacy, you get filmed every time you are in a store, driving, at a restaurant, a gas station, a bank, a airport, etc, and that information is then stored, usually on a remote site, using a network to process and archive. Everything you do is already tracked. Everything you have ever spent money on in your entire life is likely stored on a database. Even if you used cash, barter, gold, whatever, us business are required to keep those records. The IRS can get them any time they desire, and nothing beyond an audit, which is a trial with no due process, is required for them to get the data. Insurance companies are in the business because they analyse all the data about you and your peers that they can find. Heck, they can even predict what will happen to you with amazing accuracy, because they know intimate private details about you. We all have to have social security cards. They are "not a national id number" though. I could keep going a while, but seriously, privacy died many years ago.

I'm not criticising those of you who want privacy, I'm glad you exist, but its a battle that is already lost I'm afraid.

[Scott Shepherd]

Ok, I get that some of us have different privacy thresholds than others, which is I think where this conversation has lead. Scott, google glass wouldn't be required to do what you described. Any resourceful nutjob could figure it out multiple ways. I think it's a fallacy to pick a particular piece of technology as good or bad based on what you think could happen, when it is not the only way to make it happen.

Sure, they can do that now, it takes years of time and research to gather enough data that will be available in seconds by just looking at you. I'd rather criminals have to work to commit crimes against me, rather than let them walk down the street and see who the easy targets are.

I think it would benefit some people to look into google glass a little more. It's not about being filmed in the grocery store or bank. What people are not understanding about this, and where the real problem lies, is you can see things in real time. Walking down the street, you'll be able to look at someone and know anything about them in real time (anything that's posted on the internet). Imagine walking down the street and having someone know which women were single. How dangerous would that be? If someone knew, on the fly, who lived by themselves, where they worked, and everything about them, it allows for massive abilities to exploit that. Things we spent our whole lives protecting are now displayed instantly on someones glasses while they walk down the street and glance at us.

It's not the fear of being filmed, it's not about the filming, it's about the real time analyzing that's been done and fed back to the glasses. When you go into a bank, you don't expect them to upload it to youtube or facebook. What I do is my business. Prior to this all coming about, it was against the law to film someone without their consent and use that footage without their permission. We're about to blow that all out the water.

You might not see it at this point, but I've been following that since it leaked out. It's a VERY VERY dangerous place to go. A pair of those on a criminal and you've got some very scary scenarios. Far, far more scary than what we deal with today.

Do you really want a stranger filming your kid in the restroom? Do you really want a stranger filming your kids without your permission? We're not talking about your kid at a school sporting event. We're talking about your kid when you may or may not be there, and it may or not be public.

[Curt Harms]

Is it safe to assume google is tracking you regardless of what search engine you're using? At least once you've logged in once to google and they have a tracking cookie?

You're right about the tailored results, though. I don't know how many times I've seen the goofy ad from sharpening supplies where the guy is hawking strops. He's probably a nice guy (and I've bought from them before), but I'm getting tired of seeing ads. Oh, and the hair loss ads. I don't even have hair loss, are they guessing by my age?

That's one of the reasons I use FireFox. It has a bunch of useful add-ons and at or near the top of the heap is noscript. Google has a number of things they want to run on my browser pages. Noscript will allow or deny them as I choose. It's a pain initially because it denies about everything until I tell it otherwise and many things on a web page like 'find a store near me' don't work. Once I set preferences for a site it seems to remember those preferences.

Edit: Also in Firefox - maybe other browsers, I don't know - you can choose which sites are allowed persistent cookies and which sites' cookies get flushed when the browser is closed.

[Ole Anderson]

So has anyone else tried IE's InPrivate browsing?

[Bill Edwards(2)]

Search algorithms are like weather forecasting.

They are more a matter of statistics then facts.

[Harry Hagan]

"Startpage offers you Web search results from Google in complete privacy!" according to its developers.

https://startpage.com/eng/


Just to confuse the matter; Startpage was formerly called Ixquick. Ixquick is now a unique search engine that supposedly protects your privacy and is produced by the same developers.

https://ixquick.com/eng/protect-privacy.html
(https://ixquick.com/eng/protect-privacy.html)

[Brian Elfert]

I believe we're still quite a bit away from that @ this point.
As near as I can figure, standard definition video uses roughly 1 GB of storage for every 60 min. of recording.
While it's possible today......there's still a wide margin of "safety in numbers".
For the present - we're still dealing with storage at the TB level.
At a rate of roughly 1GB of storage required for evey 60 min of standard definition video, you're looking at 8.7 TB of storage to capture 1 year of video per individual.


In Great Britain there are surveillance cameras just about everywhere. I've heard that the average person in Great Britain is captured on camera an average of 300 times a day.

9 TB of storage is pretty darn cheap these days. Inexpensive SATA drives that are 2 TB are around $100 now.

[Scott Shepherd]

In Great Britain there are surveillance cameras just about everywhere. I've heard that the average person in Great Britain is captured on camera an average of 300 times a day.

9 TB of storage is pretty darn cheap these days. Inexpensive SATA drives that are 2 TB are around $100 now.

I have no issues being filmed by surveillance cameras on buildings, etc. However, I do have some really serious problems with someone walking into the bathroom and using the urinal, to have someone beside me, wearing them. People have private conversations in public places all the time. You have them with your friends, family, co-workers, etc. all the time. Imagine sitting across the table from your spouse at a restaurant, discussing private issues about your children and issues you might be having. To me, that's a private conversation. Now, image the people at the table beside you recording and filming the entire thing. Now, post that on youtube and your children now see that.

There is a right to some privacy as a human being. Not ever being able to say or do anything in public again is going to be a place not many people will enjoy. Sure, people overhear private conversations every day, all the time, but they don't know who you are or who you are talking about. This technology will know who you are and it will be able to be reproduced online via a video uploaded. Imagine complaining about your boss or the company when you're having a bad day, only for that to end up on youtube and you losing your job. It's very real and it's coming up very quickly.

[Chuck Wintle]

In Great Britain there are surveillance cameras just about everywhere. I've heard that the average person in Great Britain is captured on camera an average of 300 times a day.

9 TB of storage is pretty darn cheap these days. Inexpensive SATA drives that are 2 TB are around $100 now.

and there would be hundreds and hundreds of these drives to store info. i have no doubt that privacy is under attack and as time goes on the average citizen will have no concept of the word as his/her entire life can be laid open like a book. i am just waiting for the gov't now to begin the process of placing tracking chips in the populace under the guise of protecting national security.

[Brian Elfert]

and there would be hundreds and hundreds of these drives to store info. i have no doubt that privacy is under attack and as time goes on the average citizen will have no concept of the word as his/her entire life can be laid open like a book. i am just waiting for the gov't now to begin the process of placing tracking chips in the populace under the guise of protecting national security.

Google already has more storage than most of us could ever imagine. The statistics on how much video is uploaded to Youtube every day is absolutely staggering.

I would bet Homeland Security could spend $1 billion on storage for video without anyone in Washington even batting an eye. $1 billion buys 2 million of those 2TB drives at $500 each. (The drives have to go into a storage system so that is why $500 each.) Now, I doubt this is really going to happen, but it could.

[John Coloccia]

Google already has more storage than most of us could ever imagine. The statistics on how much video is uploaded to Youtube every day is absolutely staggering.

I would bet Homeland Security could spend $1 billion on storage for video without anyone in Washington even batting an eye. $1 billion buys 2 million of those 2TB drives at $500 each. (The drives have to go into a storage system so that is why $500 each.) Now, I doubt this is really going to happen, but it could.

Why wouldn't it happen? They're already storing every Twitter tweat....EVERY one. The Library of Congress has every tweat ever...uhm...twitted? Twowted? I'll let you make up your own term so I don't get kicked off SMC. Now tell me, what public interest does that serve? I fear we're starting to flirt with politics here, but try to forget about the politics of this and just think about privacy aspects as it relates to your life. How long will it be until the Library of Congress starts storing the entire YouTube archive....or e-mails....or phone calls....or the feeds from every red-light and traffic camera? Not only can it really happen, it's happening already. They've considered this exact thing in the UK. I'm not sure what the status of that is at the moment. Look it up...don't take my word for it. Forget the conspiracy sites. Go straight to BBC.

And don't think it's just the government. Every company out there....every one, large and small...salivates over this kind of data and they will do everything and anything they possibly can to get it, including flirting with the edges of the law. Every criminal out there salivates over all of this data and will do everything they can to get it, regardless of the law. What about the "private" data that collected and stored with good intentions, and then routinely stolen by various means? Even the good intentions of an entity simply can't be trusted to protect your personal information from abuse. The collection and storage is the problem. The intentions are secondary.

Anyhow, the takeaway isn't what you believe in terms of any politics, companies, whether you feel it's justifiable, whether you agree with it or not...save that for a different forum. The takeaway is to be aware of the simple facts of what's happening and what's already happened so that you can control exactly what information is out there and exactly who has access to it. If you're OK with all of this, then great. If you're not, take steps to control where and how your information gets from point A to point B. That's all.

[Scott Shepherd]

The takeaway is to be aware of the simple facts of what's happening and what's already happened so that you can control exactly what information is out there and exactly who has access to it. If you're OK with all of this, then great. If you're not, take steps to control where and how your information gets from point A to point B. That's all.

I agree, and the opposing argument is always "I'm not doing anything wrong so I don't have anything to hide".

Really? Identity theft has exploded. Why? Because it's easier to get the details of people's lives now. If there was ever a correlation, it's right there. Look at identity theft and realize that identity theft is happening because of electronic data. It's not like all these people are driving by your house, sorting through your trash to get your private information. How'd they get it? Through electronic means. That's the power of information and data mining people.

[John Coloccia]

It's not like all these people are driving by your house, sorting through your trash to get your private information.

I still have a pretty kick-butt shredder here. I shred everything and I needed to get something a bit more powerful because I kept on burning them up. I almost feel silly for having it these days. What's the point? Digging through the dumpster used to be a good way to find out bunches of information about companies and things. As soon as we started using computers and telephone networks, social engineering became the path to nirvana. You get the right person on the phone and say the right things, they will hand you the keys to the whole company without even knowing they did it. It's incredible what you can find out from a company just by knowing one or two insignificant bits of information and then you start using the phone. In a few hours, you can work your way into wherever you want if your employees aren't very well trained.

[Curt Harms]

'The authorities' may not have to store video on everyone, just 'persons of interest'. With the rapid advance in facial recogition technology, I wonder how hard it is to track one person in a crowd and disregard everyone else. Of course then it becomes a matter of who is a 'person of interest'? The person who wrote a letter to the editor criticizing the current administration? The person who frequents a middle eastern restaurant whose owners have suspicious ties? It seems like when this is all warrantless, the rules are whatever those in power decide they are.

[Darius Ferlas]

Trying to maintain privacy by choosing a different browser or a search engine is pretty much hopeless. Some governments, especially the US and the Israelis, have far more sophisticated tools than cookies on people's computers to see what it is that you are saying, thinking and doing. They also have all the resources they need to intercept huge amount of data in real time. They analyze that and all kinds of social media - youtube, yahoo, chat rooms, newspapers' feedback sections. The likes of google or facebook are spy agencies' dream come true - people volunteer the most intimate details of their lives. Both companies received funding from various government agencies, such as DoD.

I know of a social website (an equivalent of the American reunion.com) in a foreign land where the site's admins discovered that the entire content of the website containing details of about 10 million people was being downloaded from IP's traced to Langley, VA.

These are not even conspiracy theories, but reality that even Orwell would be surprised with. Information is power. Add some social fragmentation and you get unlimited power.

[Glenn Vaughn]

I can remember when a search engine returned results that contained what you asked for. I used AltaVista and excite for years. Google waI can remember when a search enginereturned results that contained what you asked for. I used AltaVista and excite for years. Google was good at the start but has determinateover the years.

To me the real issue is privacy; something that many ofthe socalled internet services have no respect for. The initial use of cookies was6 to storeinformation for a specific site allowing it to save logon information etc. A site could only see its own cookie. This is no longer true. Umlrdd you severly restrict cookies an actionat one site becomes available to another totally unrelated site. I had to set my privacy setting in IR to thelowest setting (more restrictive) to stop most of it. I got tired of looking at an item on Amaxonor some other site and then getting blasted for ads for the same item on siteslike FoxNews and just about any other commercial site I visit.

The privacyinvasion is constantly getting worse. The most recent culprit I have found is my anti-virus; Avast. I have been using it for years and never havehad a problem. After a recent update itstarted notifying me of update for programs I have installed. It turns out they added a new “feature”Software Updater that checks to make sure all software is up-to-date. There is no telling what else it is doingduring scans. It took several tries toget the feature turned off permanently.

I work hard to protect my family’s privacy but it is alosing battle. I run my own mail serverinstead of using an email service – the server rejects over 800 million IPaddresses just blocking spam.


s good at the start but has determinate over the years.

To me the real issue is privacy; something that many of the socalled internet services have no respect for. The initial use of cookies was6 to store information for a specific site allowing it to save logon information etc. A site could only see its own cookie. This is no longer true. Umlrdd you severly restrict cookies an action at one site becomes available to another totally unrelated site. I had to set my privacy setting in IR to the lowest setting (more restrictive) to stop most of it. I got tired of looking at an item on Amaxon or some other site and then getting blasted for ads for the same item on sites like FoxNews and just about any other commercial site I visit.

The privacy invasion is constantly getting worse. The most recent culprit I have found is my anti-virus; Avast. I have been using it for years and never have had a problem. After a recent update it started notifying me of update for programs I have installed. It turns out they added a new “feature” Software Updater that checks to make sure all software is up-to-date. There is no telling what else it is doing during scans. It took several tries to get the feature turned off permanently.

I work hard to protect my family’s privacy but it is a losing battle. I run my own mail server instead of using an email service – the server rejects over 800 million IP addresses just blocking spam.

[Brian Elfert]

The Internet is NOT free! Every time you go to a web site that is offering a service of one type or the other you are generally paying in one way or another. You may not pay in money, but there are usually ads, and/or the company does data mining. Search engines are not free as they all have ads and most do tracking and data mining. Maybe somebody needs to open a search engine that charges say $60 a year and promises zero ads, zero tracking, and zero data mining.

Google alone has hundreds of thousands of servers in data centers all over the world. That costs a lot of money to keep running.

I do agree that Google's search has gotten worse over the years. They try too hard to make searches local. There are a lot of searches where I want the most relevant result no matter where in the world the server is located.

[Bill ThompsonNM]

By the way, if you will google "turning off personalization in Google" and "turning off localization in Google" you can make the changes to return to the searches before they were highly personalized. In short, there is a switch in google which you can add to a query or you can set a flag to automatically add to a query to turn off personalization. Localization is not as obvious, select the change location pick and select something like United States to minimize localization effects.
Switching to incognito mode or equivalent in your browser will emulate turning off personalization --but it's not clear if its identical.

[Glenn Vaughn]

I know the internet is not free - I was not complaining about ads - it is the invasice process of data mining I object to.

If yuou have a salesperson come to your home would you expect him/her to go through your phone records and personal papers to see what you have been shpping for? Whais the difference if a website wou visit goes through your cookies to see where you have been and what you have looked at?

Simply establishing a connection to a website should not be seen as an invitation to explore your personal data.

[Brian Elfert]

The data they get from data mining also helps pay for the websites. There are numerous products that include removal of tracking cookies as one of the features.

[John Coloccia]

Hey, so not for nuthin', but I wonder how many people following the news today and yesterday still think we're being paranoid? Verizon (and others I'm sure) yesterday, and PRISM today.

[Brian Elfert]

Most folks automatically connect Verizon with wireless phones most of the time. I had automatically assumed this was for cell phones, but it is for landlines for business. Still not good.

[Ken Kimbrell]

Never heard of DuckDuckGo but decided to give it a try.
+1... me gonna try it as well. :)