Update as on 17th November, 2015 – Scroogle.com no longer exists.

No cookies. No search-term records. Access log deletes within 48 hours

It’s a quite difficult to obtain and maintain privacy on the web. With the various intentions of collecting user data, it’s really hard to be anonym us all the time. Google Search collects the user’s IP address, search items along with the date and time which can be avoided by using proxy anonymizers and even better, by using a search engine called Scroogle.

Wikipedia reveals:

Google originally placed a cookie on each registered user’s computer, which can be used to track that person’s search history, and that cookie was not set to expire until 2038. As of 2007, Google’s cookie now expires in two years but renews itself when a Google service is used. There is no evidence that Google turns over information to the FBI or the NSA, though some users remain anxious about the possibility. In response, Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features.

In early 2005, the United States Department of justice filed a motion in federal court to force Google to comply with a subpoena for, “the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a two-month period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query).” Google fought the subpoena, due to concerns about users’ privacy. In March 2006, the court ruled partially in Google’s favor, recognizing the privacy implications of turning over search terms and re-using to grant access.

Who is Scroogle? How does Scroogle work?

Scroogle, a Mozilla Foundation, is a nonprofit organization with a history of activism on privacy issues. For more info visit: Link

When you enter a search term through Scroogle Search, Scroogle randonly grabs an IP from a pool of it’s IP addresses called Goo IPs. It uses SSL to encrypt your search activity.Then Google issues a new cookie with a new ID, and sends the search results. Scroogle deletes the cookie and saves the results in a file which is also deleted within hour. Google records Sroogle’s IP address, search items and the date and time.

Is there a Firefox, Flock, Microsoft IE7 / IE8, Opera or a Chrome extension available for Scroogle?

Yes. A short tutorial on ‘how to’ is available on the website. www.scroogle.org

So, if you have used this service, do share your experiences in the comments section.

Interlinked Gmail Accounts

I use two Gmail IDs and have interlinked them to make things more convenient i.e I receive and reply to emails from my regular ID that have been sent to my blogger email ID. This is because i have configured my Gmail account to forward all the incoming conversations to my regular ID and also allowed it to send and reply to emails in the name of my blogger email ID. This is one of the coolest features introduced by Gmail. But, this feature comes along with one inconvenience. Gmail adds the Email ID of  the original sender in the email header which is easily readable by the recipient, which makes the feature useless for professional and business conversations.

On bringing this issue to the notice of Google. They justified that, Gmail needs to authenticate the Emails sent using it’s SMTP servers to avoid the sent emails to be flagged as SPAM in the recipient’s mail box. Hence, the “On Behalf Of” can be easily seen in some of the Email clients.

The feature is expected to be fixed in near future due to a large volume of user requests.