- Without even thinking about it
most of us type all sorts of interesting information
into this tiny rectangle known as a search bar.
We ask stupid questions,
we research the latest trends.
We look for random recommendations
and behind the scenes,
we're unknowingly feeding the search engine
the food it craves.
Things like our interests, our location,
our device, our browser,
all of this data is being gathered, analyzed and turned
into a detailed profile that is sold off
to the highest bidder or potentially used against us
in criminal or civil law cases.
Now in some instances like Amazon for example,
we really don't have much of a choice.
If you want to buy a product
and have it delivered to your door,
you have to log into some sort of account
giving over a lot of personal information
like your name, your credit card number,
your house address, and so on.
But search, search is different.
You do have a choice whether you realize it or not.
And today we're gonna walk through
a privacy focused alternative known as Startpage.
I'll explain what it is
and then provide you with four pro tips
to add another free level of privacy
while you're surfing the internet.
Welcome to All Things Secured.
My name is Josh,
and before we start,
I want to be clear that this is a sponsored video.
A number of you guys have asked me about Startpage
and I've been using the search engine for a while now.
So when the company contacted me to do a deeper dive
into how private search works,
I felt like it was a good match.
I use the service,
it's free for you to use,
and it helps to support this channel.
There are so many different reasons
why you might want to keep your online searches private,
and I'm certainly not condoning anything illegal
or destructive to your marriage or to your health.
I know people who wanted privacy
to search for help with medical issues,
perhaps checking on some embarrassing symptoms
and unexpected pregnancy,
or even mental health issues that they didn't want
the whole world to know about.
I mean it could also be something as silly as
searching for unmentionables for your spouse
and not wanting to have those kinds of ads
following you around everywhere you go for the next year.
Or something like searching on your work device
about financial or family issues,
and not wanting the information
recorded by your company's IT department.
But these are simply examples
that underscore a universally shared idea
that we often take for granted.
We all expect a certain level of privacy
in our personal lives.
A level of privacy that we deserve quite frankly,
because search is something that we do every day
and it is highly personal.
For this video I'm gonna focus on how you can take control
over your personal data now by searching in private.
How can we search anonymously online?
First off, if you're one of those people
who still thinks that it works
just to use the incognito window of your browser
and search while being logged into your online accounts
whether that's Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, or others,
I've got some bad news for you,
you've been lulled into a false sense of privacy.
Although there is no such thing
as a 100% full proof online privacy method,
it is remarkable to understand what is possible
and that's what I want to share with you today.
We're gonna be using Startpage as our foundation here.
Not only because it's a company
protected by the data privacy laws of the European union,
which are considerably stronger
than those of the United States
where many other search engines are based,
and not only because they never store your personal data
or search history,
but also because Startpage
has a special agreement with Google,
to use their arguably superior search results.
As Fast company once put it,
Startpage is Google without the privacy headache.
It's easy enough to simply type startpage.com
into your browser and start searching,
and that definitely works.
But give me just a few minutes to explain
how these four pro tips will really make a difference.
Okay, pro tip number one,
if you want the always on security to search or browse
the internet anonymously,
it makes a difference how you've set
your default search settings within your browser.
And since most of us, at least I think most of us,
generally start our searches by typing questions or queries
into the browser address bar,
that means changing your default search engine.
If you use the Brave or Vivaldi browsers,
you'll see like right here Startpage is a default option.
For all other browsers including Firefox and Chrome,
you can install an easy extension
by visiting add.startpage.com to set it as your default.
Now when I search in my address bar,
you can see that I'm automatically getting results
from Startpage's private search engine
that doesn't store my IP address
or doesn't store my history of searched terms.
Pro tip number two, control the flow of your search.
What exactly does this mean?
Well, most of the time when we perform
a traditional non-private search,
there's a lot of pieces of personal data
that are used to inform the results.
For example if I'm looking for scores
from last weekends football games
searches done from within the U.S
will show NFL American football games,
while those pretty much anywhere else in the world
would show soccer, or football, or soccer,
whatever you want to call it.
Anyway, that's a simple example
but your personal location and prior browsing history data
can really make or break good search results
which is why private search can be really tricky.
Jumping into the settings dashboard for Startpage,
you'll find that you have control of a lot more
than you realize to get the most relevant results
for your preferred language.
You can specify which region
you want to filter results from.
So if you're in the United States,
you likely want to get search results that benefit you
as a resident of the U.S.
Or let's say you're an expatriate living abroad
like me right now,
you can make sure that all of your search results
come in your own language from your home country
every single time.
If I scroll down to the bottom,
I recommend you use the post HTTP request method,
which is the most secure, at least a little bit.
You'll see this in action anytime you perform a search.
So let's say I search best coffee maker on Startpage,
you'll see that this information isn't passed along
in the URL,
whereas with almost every other search engine
this data is clearly available in the URL.
I also wanna control where my search data is routed.
In the case of Startpage
I can either have them choose their closest, fastest server,
or I can specifically choose the EU or the U.S.
Because of the strict privacy laws that I mentioned earlier,
I almost always choose the EU.
Sometimes it's a little bit slower
but it adds an extra layer of protection there.
Pro tip number three is a unique feature
I really love about Startpage called anonymous view.
When you click this little mask icon
next to the search result,
instead of being sent directly to the website,
you'll essentially be viewing the website
through a Startpage protected window.
You see in most cases
when you click over to a website from a search page,
even from a private search engine,
you're leaving the safety
of that little protected environment
and now the website you visit has a full view
of your IP address, your device specs,
and other information that it can use to fingerprint you.
With anonymous view,
the website only sees Startpage as its visitor not you.
You're using Startpage as a proxy,
which not only allows you to remain anonymous
for any website you don't particularly trust,
but it also gives you that added benefit
of forcing an HTTPS secured connection.
In other words, you could even use this as a way
to confidently surf the web
on a public network at coffee shops, or airports,
without fear of leaking any data.
Even your internet service provider,
can't see your browsing history
when you're using anonymous view.
Finally pro tip number four is learning
how to perform advanced searches within search bar.
There are two ways to do this,
and the first is to simply mimic what's possible on Google
since you're getting the same search results.
For example, you can search for Mustang,
and get results about the car,
but if you want to do a search to exclude certain terms,
you can easily do that by adding a hyphen.
So if you knew you weren't searching for the car,
you could type Mustang - cars,
and get results that aren't all about the Ford Mustang.
You can search a specific website
by typing your search term,
and then site, followed by the website address.
You can use quotes to search exact phrase matches
or even asterisk if you have specific lyrics
you can't remember.
In addition to these general Google search hacks though,
Startpage also has their own summary result features
they call instant answers.
For example you can search time zone differences
by inputting time X to Y.
So if I'm scheduling a call with somebody
in the Eastern Time Zone, but I'm here in Indochina time,
I can just type in 9:00 PM ICT to EST.
The same goes for currency conversion.
So you can type in convert 100 USD to Baht
to get the current exchange rate
between U.S dollars and Thai Baht.
For weather you can type in weather
followed by any city or zip code.
You can ask for a translation by typing
translate privacy to Spanish
or translate any word into any language.
The point of all of this,
is to show you that not only is private search possible,
it also doesn't require you to sacrifice everything
in terms of search quality or functionality.
In fact, you gain a lot of extra control
of how your search data is stored,
where the data is routed, and how you visit those websites.
If you enjoyed this video,
be sure to give it a like and go visit startpage.com
to try it out for yourself.
As always, thank you for watching, for your support,
and stay safe.