Secure Search Engine

[David Merrill]

I rebuilt my disk and have forgotten the instructions about how to secure Google so as not to leave tracks about my interests. Does anybody have that instruction set?

[Freed Gerdes]

Google Chrome has a private search engine called Ixquick begin your search for it here: https://www.ixquick.com/

Frederick Walter

[EZrhythm]

The Firefox add-on, Do Not Track Plus, http://donottrackplus.com/howitworks.php is proficient at blocking tracking companies.

BUT!

Unfortunately, inevitably and undoubtedly covering one's tracks has become futile without taking an even more proactive approach. It turns out that pc user's flash player is being used to store information (LSO's) to which it is necessary, if having installed flash player, to run Firefox for a browser and utilize the add-on BetterPrivacy. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...betterprivacy/ This involves bringing up the BP task screen and manually clicking to clear the undesirable stored information periodically through out one's use of the internet as desired. There is an automated feature but it isn't complete.

[shikamaru]

DuckDuckGo

https://duckduckgo.com

[Treefarmer]

DuckDuckGo

https://duckduckgo.com

Very cute!
I had not seen that one before.

[shikamaru]

Very cute!
I had not seen that one before.

Also, I would consider sandboxing your browser.
This, in effect, walls off your browser from the OS and other areas of RAM.

http://www.sandboxie.com/

Another option is RAMdisk. Load the browser into RAMdisk and run it from that space.

Another option is portable browsers. All these recommended items have the purpose of reducing the footprint of a browser on your OS for purposes of security.

Let's not forget TOR .

https://www.torproject.org/

There are all sorts of things we could do to increase our browser security and anonymity ....

[Taxd2death]

I would like to suggest ixquick.com as your search engine (no tracking of your I P Address) and use a program like Eraser or C Cleaner to keep private. There are also programs that allow you to surf anonymously if activated. I might also say that what you do on the front end of PC use is very important to privacy matters. IMHO Google is not good for privacy no matter what they tell you. There is another program called OSForensics that is free. It might behoove some of us to download it and run it to see just what your computer keeps even after you have cleaned it. You might be surprised. But, most of these programs are only good if you use them often. As in, every time you get on and off of the internet. Sorry for the long post. I use some of these things on our network at my office and have had some pretty good success.

[allodial]

This is probably something hardly known except in very view circles. One way of profiling or fingerprinting a computer is through a browser providing a list of available fonts. A way around this is to use a font manager and disable or enable fonts only when you need them such as when you load your favorite word process, design program or the like or by adding and removing fonts "randomly" (ones you dont use so who cares just change them often) is another way around that kind of fingerprinting. As mentioned in another post, sandboxing a browser might be helpful as well.

Other things one can do for privacy: Reinstalling your OS on a regular basis (at least once every 4 months maybe? using 'borrowed serial numbers' perhaps?), using different search engines, deleting cookies, using programs like Eraser (Portable) to clean up drives, using programs like TMAC MAC address changer, changing your hard drive serial number (PBDownForce can you say "Run As Administrator"?), etc.

Using encrypted drives/volumes and such might also be a good idea in case your computer might be compromised (TrueCrypt, SafeHouse)...stolen..borrowed..who knows.

Turning off browser "geolocation" feature might be a good idea too.

[EZrhythm]

So many resourceful ideas but unfortunately they don't accomplish much if one has Flash installed and doesn't deal with the "LSO" issue as a previously mentioned.

[shikamaru]

The NoScript plugin for Firefox is a must.

You can block scripts and only whitelist those you want.

Good looking on the osforensics. I'll check that out.