this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Privacy

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Ghostery Private Search (www.ghostery.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Zerush@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

A privacy focused search engine without logs or trackers, own index and above all, the special feature to show in the search result the ads, trackers and other crap waiting for us in every listed page.

Clicking in the icon marked with the arrow for an complete analytic in whotracks.me

To insert the search engine in the browser

https://ghosterysearch.com/search?q=%s

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[–] Yesbutnotreally@lemmy.world 53 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Wasn’t Ghostery bought by a data broker/ad company?

[–] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 22 points 9 months ago

Yes they were, and they used what you personally blocked to better enable ads that would bypass their adblocker. They had some catchy name for it, I don't remember what. When they were exposed for their practices the privacy community did a mass uninstall. These features actually seem good, but I will never trust them again.

I tried to follow the link just to look at it, my firewall blocks it for 'tracking', I could bypass it but once bitten, twice shy.

[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

My thoughts exactly... Hard pass

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago

Ghostery was also intimately involved with what is now Brave Search, IIRC.

[–] Toribor@corndog.social 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yes. If you use Ghostery and are looking for an alternative I highly recommend Privacy Badger. It's created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is free and open source. Great piece of software.

[–] JackSkellington@lemmy.world 31 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If it has anything to do with the ghostery addon that was bought by ad company, keep away from it

[–] DolphinMath@slrpnk.net 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Another independent search company with its own index is great. Repackaging Bing and Google isn’t good enough. I’d be cautious with their privacy claims though.

[–] Mojeek@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

looking at it it would seem to be getting results via the brave search api

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml -3 points 9 months ago

With own Index Andisearch (using AI) and SSuite Groot Search, you can also use a meta search like E-Tools, it use several search engines which you can select.

[–] TGhost@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Trust them and they will F. You,

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't trust not even my shadow in the web, but one thing is an online service, like a search engine, and another an installed app.

[–] TGhost@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 9 months ago

A search engine is a perfect tool to track though.
You click or not etc. And data are correlated etc.

[–] jlow@beehaw.org 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ghostery seems to be a GmbH(1) which is a German for-profit company. Does anyone know how they're making money?

(1) https://www.ghostery.com/privacy/imprint

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

As a European company, it is obliged to comply with existing privacy laws (GDPR) in order to operate. The necessary income is obtained through the Ghostery Enterprise. Similar to what Proton does, although Proton is OpenSource, they require revenue for the servers for the mail service and the VPN, but they offer these for free without ads or tracking in a reduced form, in mail with the storage limit and the VPN with a reduced number of servers (21 in 3 countries), financed with premium accounts.

There are many methods of creating income on the Internet and they are normally US companies that use the method of surveillance advertising, trafficking in user data, these practices are not used in the EU due to existing privacy regulations and even large corporations have to take care of them. An example is comparing Microsoft's privacy in the US and the EU (where it is not perfect either but light years better)

Microsoft US (Blacklight)

Microsoft EU

Ghostery Private Search analytics Blacklight

Webbkoll analytics (No third party requests out of Ghostery)

https://webbkoll.dataskydd.net/en/results?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ghostery.com%2Fprivate-search

I check the sites, services and apps with several Tools before I use them

[–] Rez@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

Is this service paid? If not, how are they making any money? All I can think of is a) selling users data (and lying) b) selling spots in search results, which means they'll be overrun with malicious links or other useless garbage. I don't believe they're just hosting a search engine out of the kindness of their hearts (:

[–] Shamot@jlai.lu 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Does it detect the paywalls and cookie walls too?

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

I don't use pages with paywalls which I can`t skip (very few), cookie walls don't exist for me, they are skipped all.

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 1 points 9 months ago

Hmm.

We'll see.