Your Search Engine is Selling You.
Tags: Search, Online Privacy, Privacy, Data, Surveillance

If you’re not using a private search engine, you are paying for every online search, Not with money. With your personal information and privacy.

If you’re not using a private search engine, you are paying for every online search, Not with money. With your personal information and privacy.

The data harvesting and collection practices of non-private search engines don’t exactly hide the fact that they’re tracking and profiling users, as well as selling their users’ search history and online behavior. In fact, these non-private search engines make Billions of dollars each year by selling people’s digital profiles to advertisers and data mining companies.

If the number “Billions,” comes as a shock, you should understand that your digital profile is very valuable. It contains a lot of personal information including: where you live and work, your propensity to spend and where you spend, your health status/symptoms, mental health condition, level of education, sexual orientation, financial background, and political preference. To name a few.

But the most alarming aspect of this? It’s what can be done with your information!

From a marketing perspective, companies and politicians leverage the information in your digital profile to place un-fair price trackers. This means that simply shopping online can cost you more money than if you’d gone to the actual store! They can also creepily follow you around the internet with invasive ads and content under the guise of “anticipating your needs”. No matter if you’re really interested in what they find for you or not. And If you think you can’t be influenced, think again: according to Google, combining ad retargeting helps advertisers increase sales by 50%.

From a surveillance perspective, your search history and digital profile can also be used, or worse, made public during court cases. Law enforcement and lawyers alike are allowed to subpoena your search history even for civil cases like divorce. This is the nightmare scenario: your search history being read aloud to a group of strangers in a courtroom. Talk about being judged for what you search for…!

And finally, access to your digital profile can lead to identity theft, corporate espionage and financial or health profiling.

Take a moment and consider what you just read, because that is a lot of personal information that strangers are collecting and selling on you!

But you are not helpless when it comes to protecting your privacy! If you want to search online accessing Google results without tracking or data selling, Startpage’s private search engine is the safe choice for you. As stated by Fast Company, “this alternative search engine is basically Google without the privacy headaches.”

Startpage has been the world’s most private search engine for over 13 years and is free for anyone to use. You are able to immediately start searching in private at Startpage.com, or better, just install Startpage’s browser extension which ensures your protection by making sure private search is always-on.

In summary, non-private search engines are selling you because your personal information and data is valuable.

Take back control of your data and cut-down on the level of manipulation you’re exposed to by using a private search engine like Startpage. #PrivacyPlease