7 Private Search Engines That Respect Your Privacy

Search engines are a necessary part of our lives, but every time you type a query into Google, your search data is recorded. Google records your IP address and uses tracking cookies to create a digital profile of you, your keywords, the precise time of your queries, and the links that you choose, and then stores this information in a database which it uses to target you further.

What this amounts to is a total erosion of your privacy, and a rise of censorship on the internet. Every time you make a query, you reveal a tremendous amount of personal information that is incredibly valuable to marketers, the government, and criminals, all of whom would love to use your private data for their own gain.

Your privacy really matters, so here are 7 search engines that really respect your privacy:

1. Bitclave

Founded by a former chief security officer at LG Electronics, BitClave is built upon the Ethereum blockchain and leverages decentralized technology as a means of heightening user privacy. BitClave gives users an experience comparable to a traditional search engine, but grants users heightened agency over the data they choose to share with advertisers while also providing business with a more finite advertising target.

BitClave eliminates ad middlemen by enabling smart contracts directly between users and online advertisers. BitClave incentivizes users by providing users with Consumer Activity Tokens (CAT) in return for making searches that are relevant to the advertiser, so users get something in return for being advertised to.

The end-result with BitClave is a search engine that both respects your privacy and is heavily tailored directly toward you, providing you with a secure, private, and optimal user experience.

2. StartPage

StartPage is one of the few search engines other than BitClave that does not track user searches or record a user’s IP address. StartPage believes that you have a right to privacy, that your search data should never fall into the wrong hands, and that the only real solution to the internet privacy issue is to not store personal user data to begin with.

3. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a go-to search engine for the privacy-conscious. DuckDuckGo doesn’t log data about you, so it’s become popular amongst users that wish to surf the web anonymously. DuckDuckGo has no way of knowing if multiple searches came from the same computer because it does not generate an identifier to identify any unique user or log user data.

4. Gibiru

Founded in 2009, Gibiru is a free uncensored anonymized search engine. Gibiru is faster than NSA search engines and does not put any cookies in your browser. Gibiru is a modified Google search algorithm that removes identifiers to give users untargeted search results.

5. Qrobe

Qrobe combines search results from Google, Bing and Ask in a single user interface, delivering results to users. When keywords are typed into Qrobe, the engine leverages existing search engine results and provides unbiased results to users.

6. Hulbee

Hulbee, like other search engines on the list, does not build identifying user profiles or build unique identifiers, but unlike the other search engines on the list, it is a semantic search engine, so it uses machine learning to evaluate the abstracted context of the keywords, providing results that were closer to the users original intent. Humble takes your privacy very seriously, but is also a cool piece of tech.

7. Yippy

Yippy also values your privacy, so they do not record user data. However, Yippy is different because it automatically categorizes query results and eliminates inappropriate results. Yip also allows users to directly categorize different content than other search engines, including jobs and news, while also not shoving ads in your face.

Major search engines have quietly amassed the largest database of personal information on individuals ever collected, and this translates into annoying targeted marketing, government monitoring, censorship, and heightened personal risk stemming from black hat hacker activity. Since privacy on the internet matters so much, consider switching to one of these 7 search engines that highly respect your privacy.