We live in an age that even George Orwell couldn’t have imagined. There are cameras everywhere, your searches are tracked, your phone calls belong to the NSA…where does it end.
Even if you’re doing nothing wrong, do you want someone snooping on your searches? You can learn a lot about someone just from capturing their search terms. For instance, you can tell if someone is sick, planning a divorce, or is suffering from incontinence. Really? Yes, really. Who wants someone else knowing what’s going on in their lives. Shouldn’t we all expect a degree of privacy.
If you don’t want your searches tracked and collated and bought and sold, try Disconnect Search. It works in your favorite browser and really helps you avoid illegal surveillance by anyone — including your ISP — who right now knows what you’re doing on the Web and what you’re searching for. Do they really need to know?
Here’s some info about Disconnect Search from its Web site:
How Disconnect Search protects you.
Disconnect Search is a specialized VPN that lets you search privately using your favorite search engine. We don’t log searches, IP addresses, or any other personal info. To learn more check out our FAQ.
- Search engines save your searches, which can be connected to your real name. Disconnect anonymizes your searches.
- When you click a result link, the site may see your search terms. Disconnect doesn’t let sites get your searches.
- Your ISP can also see your search terms. Disconnect prevents ISPs from accessing your searches.
Disconnect Search works with most popular browsers and it’s free. You can learn more by visiting the Disconnect Search home page.
(Note: Although the picture at the top looks a lot like EB when she’s screaming at me, it’s not her. I promise!)
You should of asked whether or not they charge for this service, they do.
You don’t have to pay anything – it clearly states you can pay what you feel it’s worth…but there’s no requirement to pay anything at all — you can install and use the software without charge. There was no reason to ask them anything; it’s quite clear on their site. Did you read it?
“Please consider…” is not the same as a buy now button is it?
Here is the exact wording on the site:
“Please consider supporting us by making a one-time or recurring payment below.
Name a fair price (in USD):
$100
$50
$20
$10
$ __
Make this an annual payment (cancel anytime – we’ll notify you before charging you)
Isn’t Google Chrome’s “incognito window” doing the same thing??? If not, what is the difference?
Internet Explorer’s In-Private Browsing, Google’s Incognito mode, and Firefoxes Privacy mode, are really not private at all. Here’s what Google says about Incognitgo:
Disconnect Search searches by VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) which circumvents your ISP, changes your IP address, etc. A good VPN service does not keep logs so there are no traces of your activities.
When you use incognito your ISP is logging all your searches and whatever else you’re doing. My fear is that with our money-driven society, ISP’s will soon be selling our search history to advertisers — that information is worth tons of money. When is the last time you knew of a for-profit corporation who passed up an opportunity to make more profits?
This certainly explains how after looking for shoes on different sites – ordering vitamins, etc., all of a sudden when I go to face book or any other site ie. the news channel, I get ads from the places I had previously searched. It doesn’t stop after a day or so, but continues until I search for something else and then that ad appears. I certainly will look into Disconnect Search. Thanks for telling us about this.
Yes, it IS free. Near the top of the landing page, next to the heart, it says
“Pay whatever you want, including zero”
I’ve been successfully using http://www.duckduckgo.com for many of my searches. But often I use Google as a comparison or on the chance that it will add to my search results.
Apparently, https://disconnect.me/search will make other search engines operate like
duckduckgo. Am I correct? If not, how do they differ in function?
By the way, the advertisements that follow me from site to site aren’t always the result of a search. Often I access a retail site from my “favorites” or click a link from an email subscription. Whatever item I may take a closer look at follows me as an ad on a totally different website visit. I’d much rather see an ad for something I’ve been looking for than s random one. The ads don’t concern me. What DOES bother me is the “privacy invasion” of my ISP or some other NON-ADVERTISING related 3rd party snooping for whatever reason…for NO reason. I say thank-you to “disconnect search” and TC/EB for finding them.