New Search Engine Zeekly And Others Protect Your Internet Privacy

This is a follow up to the article I wrote last week about protecting your internet search data from the National Security Agency. As promised, I wanted to give you some additional information to help keep you safe when searching the web.

As noted in the previous article, the new search engine www.Zeekly.com was launched last week. One day later, the Guardian broke the story that all of the big tech companies are under FISA court orders to turn over your search data to the NSA. In five short days, Zeekly has gone from a completely new unknown search engine to a very busy well known search engine. Zeekly has committed to it’s users that unlike other internet search engines, it will not/does not keep a database of your search history. This means that even if a court order was presented, there’s no data. Zeekly also as of today now offers strong SSL encryption. To take advantage of this you can go directly to https://www.zeekly.com, or you can click the link on the Zeekly.com home page. This is 2048-bit high end encryption which insures your communications between your computer/device/phone and Zeekly are completely secure and cannot be intercepted by your internet provider or cell phone company (well, they can intercept it… they just can’t decode it).

I’ve had a lot of email in my inbox this week about what web browser is safe to use. Currently there are four main browsers that are popular in the market:

Internet Explorer (owned by Microsoft)

Chrome (owned by Google)

Safari (owned by Apple)

Firefox (open source owned by Mozilla)

Of these four browsers, the first three are owned by companies who are listed in the leaked NSA documents to be under FISA court order to turn over your search data. The last one Firefox seems to be exempt. This is because Firefox is an open source project (any software engineer/programmer from around the world can write code to improve the browser and then Mozilla coordinates what makes it into each new version of the software). Surely it is not impossible, but it is highly unlikely that Firefox has a mechanism to record your internet searches. To me, this makes it currently the best choice. Plus, with that many developers adding to the code year after year, you can bet Firefox will always have all of the bells and whistles. You can download Firefox here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/.

The other issue I was asked about this week is Virtual Private Networks (commonly called a VPN). VPN’s are easy to install and use, and it basically acts as your proxy when you are on the internet. In other words, to the websites you are visiting, your requests are coming from the VPN’s server…. Not your personal computer or cellphone/tablet. Using a VPN practically assures your privacy is protected because if a big company is storing your unique IP address (how you are identified on the internet) along with your internet searches, your records now have the IP address of the VPN. There are numerous VPN’s out there both good and bad. I will put together a list for you in a future article. When I researched this about a year ago, I picked a company called Golden Frog (http://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn). Their VyperVPN service is excellent, and they have servers all over the world (i.e. you get to pick which one you use) Their service works on many different devices, and I’ve never had any problems or issues. In general, be careful when picking a VPN because they will have full access to your internet activities unless you are using encrypted sites like Zeekly. Additionally, there are free VPN’s, but I have found these to all cause your browsing to slow down to a crawl. Just like anything else, you get what you pay for. Obviously a combination of using a VPN along with a secured search site like Zeekly would give you maximum protection from snoopers.

The last thing I wanted to cover was other search engines. Make sure you know their privacy policies, and ask them if the collect and store your data. If they do, I wouldn’t use them until the existing laws are enforced and/or new laws are written that prevent mass data collection by the government. Secondly, pay attention to what is happening when you search on a site. I was told recently about a site claiming to protect privacy, but many of the searches for things like images and videos didn’t stay on their site and took you directly to Google. I have nothing against Google, but we all know the NSA is collecting their data. So, don’t trust a search engine that says it’s protecting you, and takes you away from their site to a company on the NSA list. Ask questions, use good judgment, and you’ll be OK.

As noted in the article last week: /science-and-technology/2013/07/protecting-your-information-from-the-nsa-2-2623514.html, new tech companies are beginning to emerge such as Zeekly who value your privacy, and are taking steps to protect your data. We need to support these companies for being courageous, stepping out, and drawing a line in the sand. Internet searches are so personal in nature (truly a complete picture of who you are) and nobody has a right to be collecting this type of information on American citizens, or anybody else for that matter. These new companies deserve our support so they can continue to grow, so when you find a good one, bookmark it, and share it with your family & friends. Word spreads fast on the internet, and we can truly have a revolution of internet privacy by informing others through social media and email about these sites.

Safe browsing! If you have further questions you can send them to [email protected].