Scroogle Search Tool

I have just come across this great little online tool called Scroogle which basically allows you to carry out Google searches but without all the concerns about privacy. Google is well known for its motto “Do no evil” however they seem to have forgotten that in recent years and gone from a search engine to trying to take over the Internet with their advertising, cloud based applications, widgets and API’s as well as much more. They most definitely forgot about their motto when they jumped in bed with the Chinese for the $$$ and helped implement one of the worlds most complex blacklisting and blocking tools to prevent the Chinese people from having the same Internet freedom as we believe we have here in the west.

However when you take a look at all the moves in the industry at the moment towards collating Internet data by creating huge central databases of emails, searches and traffic history as well as the moves by the large telecom companies to prevent net neutrality, official censorship in countries i.e Australia, China and probably more before long due to laws designed to “protect” people from certain content, unofficial censorship due to publicly accessible wi-fi networks with blacklists of sites that are deemed unsuitable viewing as well as the moves to deny internet access to people who are accussed of illegal downloading then its clear that the early days of Internet freedom have long gone by.

However the Internet savvy people of the modern generation are clever people and will always find a way around restrictions that the government tries to impose. Just look at how the people of Iran managed to evade the technical roadblocks that their governemnt tried to impose during the recent political uprisings after the recent election.

There are many freely available tools that help people evade any national firewalls and route traffic through proxies and darknets which make tracking and blocking users Internet traffic much more difficult. People are also becoming more aware of all the tracking cookies that companies like Google use to track the sites people visit and therefore enable them to deliver bespoke advertisements suited to the audience. More and more people surf the net with cookies and Javascript disabled to prevent simple tracking by urchins and client side loggers however countries such as the UK have now mandated that server side logs of Internet traffic use as well as emails sent and received should be kept for at least a year to enable a multitude of government agencies to snoop and spy on the public without the need for a warrant.

Therefore it seems that the techno war between the government who want to know everything with the aid of companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and the freedom loving Internet users who just want to surf the net for their favourite type of porn without fear of getting caught will soon hot up with more and more people going undercover onto dark-nets and  other forms of encrypted surfing to evade big brother snooping on them.

For those of you interested in carrying out Google searches without worrying about your search being logged by either Google or your company then this cool page by Scroogle allows you to do just that. The search form uses a POST method instead of a GET method which prevents the search terms from appearing in the log files and it also has an SSL which means the traffic is encrypted and prevents snoopers from intercepting it.  The company also states that it will automatically delete all traces of your search from its log files within 48 hours. Try it out.

https://ssl.scroogle.org/

For those of you interested in reading more about how to bypass security and anti-privacy snooping then you should read my other articles:

Surfing Anonymously and avoiding Internet Censorship

Create your own Web Proxy