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User Privacy
Data Leak Data Privacy Private Data Search Engines Technology User Privacy

How to Erase The Personal Details Google Knows About You

 

One can get a sense of the volume of data they are giving away to Google every day by considering all the things they do on Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and other Google services. That is... a lot for most of us. 

Google at least offers a thorough web dashboard that you can use to view some of the data being acquired, regardless of whether you believe the targeted advertising and data collecting are worth the free apps you receive in return.

It allows you to eliminate all of the data that Google has already gathered, prevent it from collecting further, or have your data automatically deleted after a predetermined amount of time (such as three months). If you intend to delete your Google account, you can also utilise these tools to clean the records; however, doing so should also remove all of the data linked to your account.

Here's how to use the options that are accessible to you.

Locate your data 

Getting started is really simple: Open your Google account page in your preferred web browser, and sign in if necessary. This screen displays your Google subscriptions, the devices to which you are signed in with your Google account, and any passwords that you may have saved, among other details. 

  • On the left, click "Data and privacy."
  • Look for the history settings. It is divided into three major categories: Web and apps, location, and YouTube.
  • To get a complete list of this data, click the My Activity icon at the bottom of the section. You'll see everything you've done that has been recorded in Google products, beginning with the most recent.
  • Select filter by date & product to narrow the results to certain date ranges or apps.
  • To delete a filter you've applied, click the X at the top of the list. 
  • If additional information is available, click on any entry in the list to view it. You can open YouTube videos or websites that you've visited.

Delete your data

  • When it comes to data that Google has already acquired and logged, you can delete it in a number of ways. 
  • If you are viewing the entire activity list, click Delete (to the right of the filter). 
  • You can delete records from the last hour, day, or a custom range. You can also select Always to erase everything.
  • If you filtered the list by date or product, click Delete results to remove everything that matched the filter.
  • Whether or not the list is filtered, clicking the X next to any single entry deletes it. 

It's useful to have a central repository for all of your data accessible via a single online site, but some sorts of data can also be found elsewhere. You can remove your web activity from within Chrome as long as you are signed in to Google, for example, or access your YouTube view history via the YouTube website.
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Search leakage
Data collection DuckDuckGo Privacy Qwant Search Engines Search leakage

Qwant or DuckDuckGo: Which Search Engine is More Private?


Qwant and DuckDuckGo are two privately-focused search engines that guarantee not to track your activities. Their ability to assist you in avoiding the privacy-invading methods that are all too prevalent among big search engines is one of the key components of their appeal. However, in search engine businesses, it is easy to promise one thing but instead do whichever one thing brings the most profit to the organization. 

Here, we are comparing DuckDuckGo with Qwant to discover which search engine is better at safeguarding its users' privacy beyond the marketing claims. 

Data Collection 

Any search engine company's efforts to collect data is a highly risky task. There is a very blurry line between the quantity of data that is required and the amount that is excessive. Once a search engine service crosses this blurry line, one can infer that the notion of privacy is simply abandoned. 

IP address, device type, device platform, search history, and links clicked on results pages are some of the instances of data collected by major search engine companies. 

However, they do not necessarily need to collect all that data, compromising users’ privacy. So, what kind of data do Qwant and DuckDuckGo collect on their users? 

Data Collected by Qwant 

The Qwant search engine service, according to Qwant, aims to gather as little information as possible. While this is partially accurate, it still gathers some information that could violate your privacy, such as your IP address, search phrases, preferred languages, and news trend data. The privacy of the user is heavily prioritized in the data processing methods used by Qwant. To be fair, they made a significant effort. 

Qwant's weakness is that it largely depends on outside services, some of whose privacy policies may not always protect the privacy of users. Qwant, for instance, relies on Microsoft to conduct ad services for revenue purposes. For this, it needs to collect and share the IP addresses and search terms of its users with Microsoft. Some of us may be aware that Microsoft is not exactly a privacy pioneer. 

However, Qwant asserts that it does not transmit search terms and IP addresses together. Instead, to make it difficult for the parties concerned to link search phrases to IP addresses, search terms, and IP addresses are transmitted differently utilizing several services. 

In other words, they hinder the ability of outside services to create a profile of you. However, some contend that the sheer fact that Qwant gathers this data constitutes a potential privacy breach. 

Data Collected in DuckDuckGo 

In ideal terms, the right amount of data collected is ‘no personal data at all.’ Your IP address, cookies, search terms, or any other personally identifiable data are never collected by DuckDuckGo. Every time you use the DuckDuckGo search engine, you are in fact using it as an entirely new user. There is no way for DuckDuckGo to determine if you have been there previously. 

Most of the data generated as a result of your interaction with the DuckDuckGo is destroyed once you exit the search engine. This is part of the reason why DuckDuckGo does not have a clear idea of just how many people use its search engine. 

Clearly, in terms of data collection and sharing their user data with a third party, one can conclude that DuckDuckGo is the most privacy compliant in comparison with Qwant. 

Search Leakage 

Search leakage occurs when a search engine fails to properly delete or anonymize data that can be given to a third party when you click on a link on search result pages. Your search history, browser history, and in some situations, cookies are a few examples of data that might be compromised. 

In order to prevent search leaks, both DuckDuckGo and Qwant have implemented a number of precautionary measures, including, but not limited to the encryption of your data. 

However, a challenging privacy problem for both search engines is that they store your search terms in the URL of their result pages. While it does not appear to be a privacy issue, it is. Both DuckDuckGo and Qwant unintentionally reveal your search history to the browser of your choice by keeping your search keywords in their URL parameters. 

This implies that despite your best efforts, everything you may have done to keep your search private could be undone if you use a browser that monitors your browsing activity, particularly how you use search engines. 

In terms of search leakage, neither DuckDuckGo nor Qwant convincingly outperforms the other. 

Which Search Engine is More Private? 

If one needs a less invasive option than the likes of Google, Bing, and Yahoo, then either Quant or DuckDuckGo could be an alternative. Both search engines take great care to ensure that whatever you do on their site concerns only your business. 

However, if you prefer the strictest privacy options available, then DuckDuckGo might be a better choice.  

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Trojan
blackhat seo poisoning DLL malware Microsoft Search Engines Trojan

IISerpent Trojan Manipulates Search Engine Optimization

 

Security researchers recently had to cope with a huge number of malware attacks targeting the Internet Information Services (IIS) component. The IISerpent Trojan is the most recent malware family to be added to the list. 

The malware is installed as a Microsoft IIS add-on. After that, it intercepts HTTP requests and traffic, but there's a catch. This IIS malware works differently than other IIS malware that leverages this opportunity to steal credentials and private data, such as the IISpy Backdoor. It only gets to work if it recognizes requests to specific search engines, rather than ordinary HTTP traffic. Search engines have crawlers that scour the Web for pages to index or re-index on a regular basis. It is possible for pages on the same domain to link to one another. Crawlers utilize specific algorithms to determine a page's search engine ranking. 

Buying adverts or implementing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are two valid ways to improve page ranking in search engine result pages, however not all digital marketers follow the laws. SEO-boosting practices (which, however, contravene webmaster guidelines) such as loading pages with unrelated keywords or buying backlinks to improve a website's reputation are referred to as unethical SEO (historically known as black hat SEO).

IISerpent is a native IIS module, implemented as a C++ DLL and configured in the %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\ApplicationHost.config file. IISerpent ensures both persistence and execution because all IIS modules are loaded by the IIS Worker Processes (w3wp.exe) and used to handle inbound HTTP requests.

IISerpent exports a function called RegisterModule, which provides module initialization, just like all native IIS modules. Its event handlers — methods of the module class (inherited from CHttpModule) that are called on certain server events – hide the underlying harmful functionality. IISerpent's code class alters the IIS server's OnBeginRequest and OnSendResponse methods, causing the malware's handlers to be called every time the IIS server begins processing a new inbound HTTP request and transmits the response buffer. 

Because everything appears normal to the webmaster and users - all the 'magic' happens in the background – these assaults are extremely difficult to detect. Of course, a short glance at a backlink analysis or network traffic data will suggest that something is amiss. 

The worst thing about the IISerpent Trojan's attack is that the websites that are attacked could lose their good SEO ranking. This is possible because search engine crawlers will quickly notice the link between the original page and the counterfeit website, which will usually result in SEO penalties.
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Technology
Brave Browser Search Engines Technology

Brave Browser is About to Launch its Own Search Engine

 

Brave is a free and open-source web browser based on the Chromium web browser that had been established by Brave Software, Inc. It offers an ad-free browsing experience and website trackers, and also accepts cryptocurrency from facility takers as a contribution in the form of Basic Attention Tokens to websites and content creators.
 
At present, Brave works on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. In recent updates, Brave organization is about to launch its own independent privacy-focused search engine that will support both ads and ad-free search results. 

As per the Company’s briefings, the search engine is developed by the former Cliqz team. The company had already announced the name of its upcoming search engine known as 'Brave Search'. The Tailcat search engine will be a foundation of Brave Search that will be integrated into the Brave browser. 

Additionally, the Search engine can be accessed outside of the company’s browser by navigating to brave.com/search. However, right now if you go there you will be seeing an option to sign up to the mailing list. For now, the company has not disclosed the date of launching for its Brave Search. Though, those who already signed up for the mailing list they will be first to use the new search engine when it will be launched. 

This alternative is being touted as “the first private alternative to Google Search and Google Chrome on both mobile and desktop.” However, it seems true. There exist some private alternatives to Google, but they do not provide both a browser and search engine on mobile and desktop. At present, the DuckDuckGo search engine is best known for its successful private alternative to Google, but it does not offer a desktop browser. 

In a press release, the company explained that how its search engine will be different from the previous ones developed by “Big Tech”: 

“Under the hood, nearly all of today’s search engines are either built by, or rely on, results from Big Tech companies. In contrast, the Tailcat search engine is built on top of a completely independent index, capable of delivering the quality people expect, but without compromising their privacy. Tailcat does not collect IP addresses or use personally identifiable information to improve search results.” 

Brave’s privacy-oriented web browser witnessed its own grown list of monthly active users from 11 million to 25 million. The company stated that right now we are considering offering both paid and free and versions of its search engine.
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