As we all know, search engines like tracking you - your IP address, your search terms and so on. They use this to build up profiles, store the data and so on. It can be a real pain trying to search without this information being stored, but you can try Disconnect Private Search. This routes your search queries through their proxy servers before they go to the popular search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo. Instead of these search engines knowing that a search is coming from you or your computer, all searches look like they’re coming from Disconnect. They prevent search engines from sending your search queries to the web sites you visit from search results pages, and encrypt your search queries, which prevents your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from seeing your searches.
You can install their service onto your browser, or if you're unable to do that, you can search directly from their website:
When you run your search you'll get a drop down box next to the search box for the engine that you're using, and you can choose to search on Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or Blekko. In actual fact, it's almost acting like a mini multi search engine at that point, since you can flick from one to the other. Not entirely sure why they have added in DDG, as that is already a private search engine, but more is better than less.
You may notice a few differences to the search results - since the search engine doesn't know where you are, it can't provide you with local results, and some advanced search functionality is unavailable, although they're working on it. I think it's worth giving this a go, even if only from the website; it's really interesting to see which searches differ, certainly in comparision to your own results that Google gives you, based on your Google account!
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