Startpage

Are you worried about what Google knows about you? Here's a way to reduce that AND what the web sites you visit know about you.

It's startpage.com.

Their tagline is:.

The world's most private search engine.

While that's not a very high bar, every little bit helps.

Startpage is headquartered in the Netherlands so it operates under the European Union's privacy regulations.

If you've tried alternative search engines, you've probably been disappointed with the results. However Startpage has an arrangement with Google  This is done without saving the users' IP addresses or giving any personal user information to Google's servers.

But the part I really like of Startpage is the anonymous surfing feature. Here's an example.

Here's where the Anonymous View took me.

Notice that the page is framed so that you know you are anonymous. You can break out by clicking on the "door" in the bottom right corner.

I was interested in why there was this big blank space so I loaded the page normally.

The nytimes.com site was trying to get the user to give them credentials.

Good job Startpage!