Scroogle is M A D !!!

Yes, I believe all three are all brand names for Ixquick & were chosen for ease of remembering.

I rarely ever use the Google search engine directly now. I have Duck Duck Go (SSL) as default engine (easier to do in SeaMonkey than Firefox) & usually Startpage as my homepage. The only difference that I know is that the Ixquick page is a bit more aesthetically customisable.

 

Maybe I am being to simplistic but explain to me why they cant? Ok so you do a search via -https://encrypted.google.com/on google? I understand the data is encrypted between your computer and google preventing a man in the middle from seeing what you are searching for. But Google is the server they are the one providing the https. So your search is received by there servers and is decrypted and your search results are displayed. So Googles servers sees what is being searched for. They have to. How else would they display the search results? Bottom line Google knows what you are searching for even when you use https. Another way of thinking of this is comparing it to when you login to webmail or banking via https. You type in your username and password and submit it the data is encrypted while it is going over your network and out over the internet but then it reaches the destination server it is decrypted and then your password is matched and it allows you to login. So the server has to read what you actually typed in thats how it knows to you typed the correct password. A Google search is the same way It is decrypted on Googles servers and they know and can log what you are searching for. Do I have this wrong?

 

Google sees your search results when you use https://encrypted.google.com. No one else, including ads, does.

There is no way to use a search engine, scroogle or otherwise, that doesn't know what you're searching for.

Google does remove the data it tracks/ encrypts it after time by the way. I think once a search is 9 months old it's removed. Something like that. I think they also don't collect personally identifying information - the issue with this is that if you collect enough nonidentifying information it ends up being fairly identifying.

Oh, and Google provides the opt out, I think J_L linked to that.

 

That was the point I was trying to make.

Agreed of course if you are using a VPN or Tor they can not identify a search with you since they do not know your IP. If your logged into your Google account when you do searches though it doesnt matter then because they then can put your search results with your username. And while yes Ixquick,duckduckgo etc can see what users are searching for the difference is they do not log what particular IPs are searching for what. I have echoed that over and over again in this thread.

Exactly. And many people do not like there data retention policy. Here is what it says:

We anonymize IP addresses after 9 months and alter the cookie numbers in our logs permanently after 18 months. This breaks the link between the search query and the computer it was entered from and is similar to the way in which credit card receipts replace digits with hash marks to improve customer security.

SOURCE

I personally rather them not be building a database of what i have searched for at all yet alone for 9 months. And then after that big they delete the last decimal Im sure it would be possible to narrow down who searched for what Also they keep the search terms forever I suppose since it says nothing about them deleting them.

 

I've hardly been able to use Scroogle at all over past week or so...they seem to be getting blocked all the time...bummer just getting same message like LockBox saw.

Edit: Just tried it and it worked...but it really does seem to be hit and miss apparently.

 

Having the same issue over the past 3-4 days.. it happens at random.

 

I've noticed it myself, & I don't use Scroogle that often.

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/14/scroogle_down/

 

Forbidden
so sorry...
Google is temporarily blocking this Scroogle server.

Please wait ten minutes before trying again.

Yes, Scroogle is upset with Google.

1. Google handles 1 billion searches per day, while Scroogle handled 350,000 searches per day. This means that Scroogle was 0.035 percent of Google's load.

2. Google owns 900,000 servers, while Scroogle leased just six low-end dedicated servers.

3. Google has $45 billion in the bank, while Scroogle is a recognized public charity and survives on modest donations averaging $43 per day.

4. For more than seven years, Scroogle has always made serious efforts to detect and block any and all bots. Almost every Scroogle searcher is a live person clicking on a mouse. Yet Google treats Scroogle like a bot because they see the traffic from our IP addresses as higher than normal. Searching Google with a bot is against Google's terms of service, but Scroogle users are not bots.


Is it "Terms of Service" for Google, or is it "Terms of Monopoly"?

Is it curtains for Scroogle?

 

Only works for about 5% of the time now

 

lol @ calling them a monopoly because they don't let them scrape their results. Plenty of other search engines do just fine without scraping Google.

 

It does seem a bit petty by the Big 'G' though.

 

Why?

Scroogle's dedicated to badmouthing Google while simultaneously scraping all of Google's results.

 

It seems Google is very sensitive to criticism.

 

Scroogle should learn not to bite the hand that feeds.

 

I thought that was their very marketing point though.

 

http://www.betabeat.com/2012/02/15/scroogle-may-have-been-a-victim-of-hackers-not-google/

 

Oh those pesky Brit-hackers ...

 

Scroogle now dead?? It's been unusable for the past few days and Scroogle.org now gives a "Webpage not available." Chromium says the DNS lookup failed.

 

It's not just you ...
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/scroogle.org (from Firefox).

 

http://www.betabeat.com/2012/02/21/scroogle-privacy-first-search-engine-shuts-down-for-good/

 

" ... His theory is that he was being attacked .. "
Shouldn't that be hypothesis or merely claim?

 

The same link also has this:

Of course, Google-haters won't give publicity to that and will prefer to continue alleging that Google scroo-ed Scroogle to death for whatever reason totally ignoring the possibility of the "spam control tripping" being true. The stakes are high. Killing off Google will mean more sales for the rest and theGoogle-haters are dutifully doing their bit.

An analogy that maybe contested by the usual suspects: A certain software major hardly takes efforts to combat piracy of its software despite the security concerns that exist. One could argue that the software major would rather people use its pirated software than use legitimate paid software of another company or even, perish the thought, free software. Why don't the usual suspects extend the same argument to the Google-Scroogle affair and be willing to concede that maybe, just possibly, Google didn't deliberately scroo Scroogle?

 

Don't worry the princess Google is saved as long cavaliers with armor like you still exist.

 

Scroogle's search engine queries equal 'spam'? How does that work?
Google's algorithms can't see that completely different search term combinations from a limited number of IP's don't equal 'spam'? Don't make me laugh.
Those algorithms are fine tuned enough to find out if Peruvian 80 year old grandmothers, who all have mauve as their favorite color, like CocaCola or CocaCola Light, at night time, during a full moon. And high tide.
Not saying that Google should oblige Scroogle, it's their prerogative how they deal with such search engines but the rationale for the intervention is pretty poor.

-edit; With 'intervention', I of course don't mean Google has anything to do with the DDOS flood mentioned above.