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Author Topic: Be careful what you search for...  (Read 1762 times)

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Offline BucklingSpring

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Be careful what you search for...
« on: Sun, 01 December 2013, 09:02:48 »
There is a few centuries old adage saying “be careful what you wish for”.

 Is it time now to update it to “be careful what you search for”?

The main Internet search engines keep track of every query for I don’t know how long. I’m sure they already have filters to discard the useless from the juicy stuff. Does it mean that we will only be remembered for the questionable searches we made?

I know many sites such as
https://www.ixquick.com/eng/advanced-search.html?&cat=web&query=
Offering “private” searches. But I don’t care to use them since they provide very limited results.

I pay for a VPN service to skew my geolocation and have access to all the different content Netflix is providing depending on your location. Does it make me a smuggler?

So the question is - Are you aware and do you do something about it?
« Last Edit: Sun, 01 December 2013, 09:06:30 by BucklingSpring »
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Offline BucklingSpring

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Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #1 on: Sun, 01 December 2013, 09:05:27 »
-delete- was meant to edit ^
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Offline iri

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Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #2 on: Sun, 01 December 2013, 11:43:26 »
i switched to duckduckgo for anonymous search.
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(...)Whereas back then I wrote about the tyranny of the majority, today I'd combine that with the tyranny of the minorities. These days, you have to be careful of both. They both want to control you. The first group, by making you do the same thing over and over again. The second group is indicated by the letters I get from the Vassar girls who want me to put more women's lib in The Martian Chronicles, or from blacks who want more black people in Dandelion Wine.
I say to both bunches, Whether you're a majority or minority, bug off! To hell with anybody who wants to tell me what to write. Their society breaks down into subsections of minorities who then, in effect, burn books by banning them. All this political correctness that's rampant on campuses is b.s.
-Ray Bradbury

Offline BucklingSpring

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Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #3 on: Sun, 01 December 2013, 11:53:32 »
Quote from: iri on Sun, 01 December 2013, 11:43:26
i switched to duckduckgo for anonymous search.

Does it have a "advanced" search option?
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Offline iri

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Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #4 on: Sun, 01 December 2013, 12:02:01 »
you can easily browse to their web site and see if it has what you want.
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(...)Whereas back then I wrote about the tyranny of the majority, today I'd combine that with the tyranny of the minorities. These days, you have to be careful of both. They both want to control you. The first group, by making you do the same thing over and over again. The second group is indicated by the letters I get from the Vassar girls who want me to put more women's lib in The Martian Chronicles, or from blacks who want more black people in Dandelion Wine.
I say to both bunches, Whether you're a majority or minority, bug off! To hell with anybody who wants to tell me what to write. Their society breaks down into subsections of minorities who then, in effect, burn books by banning them. All this political correctness that's rampant on campuses is b.s.
-Ray Bradbury

Offline davkol

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Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #5 on: Sun, 01 December 2013, 13:35:48 »
I use DuckDuckGo, StartPage and ixquick. I don't think I can trust them (remember Lavabit?), but it's better than Google when you're signed in. In fact, I've used this combo for ages, because I didn't like living in a shell with Google serving my results based on my previous searches even when it made things harder to find for me.
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Offline Oobly

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Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #6 on: Mon, 02 December 2013, 04:19:54 »
Another vote for Duckduckgo. The results aren't quite as good as Google, but IMHO it's "less evil" than Google.
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Offline iri

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  • Location: England
Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #7 on: Mon, 02 December 2013, 04:40:29 »
i've never been concerned about google's privacy issues. what took me away was awful quality of its services. the last drop for me was google web search language settings. i set the search results language to english, i enter the query, and i get a result in russian ON A FOURTH ****ING PLACE.
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(...)Whereas back then I wrote about the tyranny of the majority, today I'd combine that with the tyranny of the minorities. These days, you have to be careful of both. They both want to control you. The first group, by making you do the same thing over and over again. The second group is indicated by the letters I get from the Vassar girls who want me to put more women's lib in The Martian Chronicles, or from blacks who want more black people in Dandelion Wine.
I say to both bunches, Whether you're a majority or minority, bug off! To hell with anybody who wants to tell me what to write. Their society breaks down into subsections of minorities who then, in effect, burn books by banning them. All this political correctness that's rampant on campuses is b.s.
-Ray Bradbury

Offline BucklingSpring

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  • Posts: 1613
Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #8 on: Mon, 02 December 2013, 18:40:47 »
Quote from: iri on Mon, 02 December 2013, 04:40:29
i've never been concerned about google's privacy issues. what took me away was awful quality of its services. the last drop for me was google web search language settings. i set the search results language to english, i enter the query, and i get a result in russian ON A FOURTH ****ING PLACE.

That's what you get when you store too many Russian cookies on your drive ;-)
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Offline iri

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Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #9 on: Tue, 03 December 2013, 00:01:05 »
to be honest, i don't remember having any of google-related cookies that contained anything related to russian.
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(...)Whereas back then I wrote about the tyranny of the majority, today I'd combine that with the tyranny of the minorities. These days, you have to be careful of both. They both want to control you. The first group, by making you do the same thing over and over again. The second group is indicated by the letters I get from the Vassar girls who want me to put more women's lib in The Martian Chronicles, or from blacks who want more black people in Dandelion Wine.
I say to both bunches, Whether you're a majority or minority, bug off! To hell with anybody who wants to tell me what to write. Their society breaks down into subsections of minorities who then, in effect, burn books by banning them. All this political correctness that's rampant on campuses is b.s.
-Ray Bradbury

Offline BucklingSpring

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  • Posts: 1613
Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #10 on: Tue, 03 December 2013, 18:45:34 »
They do use OS language detection as well.

The computer at work does not use an English OS and no matter how hard I tried to get results in English... My search results are polluted by OS's language.
I suspect geolocation also got something to do with it.
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Ducky x2 (9008G2 Pro PBT/MX Green and Mini MX Red), Matias x2 (QP and Mini QP Dampened ALPS), Topre RealForce x4 (87U 55g/Digilog case, 103U-UW & 104UG High-Profile x2), Filco Majestouch x2 (TKL MX Blue & V2 AI 104 MX Blue), IBM-M x2 (BS & RD), Unicomp-M x5 (BS black on black x2, BS Ivory x2, QT Ultra-Classic), Deck x4 (Legend MX Black & MX Clear, Hassium & Francium w/ MX Brown), DAS III (MX Blue), KBT Pure Pro 60% (MX Red), NMB-RT8256CW+ x2 (black space invader), XArmor U9BL-S (MX Brown) given for free to someone I hate, CM X2 (Trigger/MX Green + Storm TKL/NovaTouch), TVS GOLD (MX Blue) and a many many more (NMB, DELL, MS, ATT, KeyTronic, Etc...)

Offline Oobly

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Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #11 on: Wed, 04 December 2013, 01:38:39 »
Quote from: BucklingSpring on Tue, 03 December 2013, 18:45:34
They do use OS language detection as well.

The computer at work does not use an English OS and no matter how hard I tried to get results in English... My search results are polluted by OS's language.
I suspect geolocation also got something to do with it.

Many sites do use your physical locale. I get really irritated when sites detect I'm in Finland and display the site in Finnish. With no language choice option available. Gee, thanks, Mr. Elite web coder, nice feature, maybe you should ALSO think before you use it.

You can try this if you use FireFox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quick-locale-switcher/
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Offline iri

  • Posts: 998
  • Location: England
Re: Be careful what you search for...
« Reply #12 on: Wed, 04 December 2013, 03:43:17 »
Quote from: BucklingSpring on Tue, 03 December 2013, 18:45:34
I suspect geolocation also got something to do with it.
it definitely does. i got the same results (as described above) on a machine with en_us locale located in moscow.
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(...)Whereas back then I wrote about the tyranny of the majority, today I'd combine that with the tyranny of the minorities. These days, you have to be careful of both. They both want to control you. The first group, by making you do the same thing over and over again. The second group is indicated by the letters I get from the Vassar girls who want me to put more women's lib in The Martian Chronicles, or from blacks who want more black people in Dandelion Wine.
I say to both bunches, Whether you're a majority or minority, bug off! To hell with anybody who wants to tell me what to write. Their society breaks down into subsections of minorities who then, in effect, burn books by banning them. All this political correctness that's rampant on campuses is b.s.
-Ray Bradbury
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