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Search without Google Tracking You (My 'pseudo' Startup)

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Search without Google Tracking You (My 'pseudo' Startup)

#21

Post by drm237 »

tomek wrote: post #19

It's a nice initiative. You have probably heard of Scroogle ( http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htl ). How different is your thing from their thing?

They're very similar. The difference is that I like our interface better and we provide unlimited scrolling of the results. If people like the site and want to use it, I'm also planning on adding other search engines.

For the most part, it's been an experiment on my part to have a public site that people use. I've built quite a few sites, but this is the first with AJAX and some other technologies, so it's been a learning project for me as well.

Re: Search without Google Tracking You (My 'pseudo' Startup)

#22

Post by bls »

drm237 wrote: post #10
bls wrote: post #9

Instead of giving our private information to Google to use for 18 months, we are giving it to you to use indefinitely? Where is your privacy policy? And, what is your hosting provider's policy? I found out recently that my hosting provider refused to make any guarantees; that means that I cannot make any guarantees either, since my hosting provider has full access to my server.

A privacy policy is very high on my list of things to do, along with an explanation of how it works so that people can feel confident in their privacy. Right now, the only thing I record is a SHA1 has of everyone's IP address and a timestamp so that I can track how many unique people have used it. With the SHA1 hash, there's no (very difficult) way to trace that back to the user. I'm also talking to my host about the…

The thing about low-cost web hosting is that it is impossible to stop your web host--or their contractors--from getting the data. Even if you use TLS (SSL), the web host and their associates have full access to your private key. For most hosting solutions, the best that you can do is colocating your own physically-locked server, and use TLS to encrypt everything.

Without using TLS, you cannot prevent the user's ISP from recording--and even reselling--your user's search histories. Similarly, your hosting providers could be doing the same thing. Keep in mind that hosting and bandwidth is a multi-level value chain--your host is probably renting space and bandwidth from somebody else, who is renting from somebody else, who is renting from somebody else. Any one of those companies and/or their rogue employees can collect, re-transmit, prevent, and/or redirect (e.g. man-in-the-middle) your user's queries without your knowledge.

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