Search Encrypt

Last updated
Search Encrypt
Search encrypt main logo.jpg
Type of site
 Web search engine
Available inmultilingual
HeadquartersNora Court, 3rd floor, office 301, Limassol, Cyprus
Website searchencrypt.com
Alexa rankIncrease2.svg1,512 (May 14, 2019) [1]
CommercialYes
RegistrationNone
LaunchedApril 16, 2016;3 years ago (2016-04-16)
Current statusActive

Search Encrypt is an Internet search engine that prioritizes maintaining user privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. It offers general web search, image and video search capabilities. Search Encrypt recently added a news search functionality [2] . Search Encrypt earns revenue from the advertisements that appear above the search results. In addition, the engine is often installed by users as a browser extension, and then redirects the browser's searches to Search Encrypt. It also changes settings, which the user grants permission for when installing the extension. [3] The engine aims to differentiate itself from other search engines by using local encryption on searches and delayed history expiration. Search Encrypt emphasizes steps to anonymize user data, rather than building behavioral retargeting profiles on users.

Web search engine Software system that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web

A web search engine or Internet search engine is a software system that is designed to carry out web search, which means to search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a web search query. The search results are generally presented in a line of results, often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a mix of web pages, images, videos, infographics, articles, research papers and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler. Internet content that is not capable of being searched by a web search engine is generally described as the deep web.

Internet privacy right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via of the Internet; a subset of data privacy

Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing.

Filter bubble result state in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see

A filter bubble – a term coined by Internet activist Eli Pariser – is a state of intellectual isolation that allegedly can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior and search history. As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. The choices made by these algorithms are not transparent. Prime examples include Google Personalized Search results and Facebook's personalized news-stream. The bubble effect may have negative implications for civic discourse, according to Pariser, but contrasting views regard the effect as minimal and addressable. The results of the U.S. presidential election in 2016 have been associated with the influence of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and as a result have called into question the effects of the "filter bubble" phenomenon on user exposure to fake news and echo chambers, spurring new interest in the term, with many concerned that the phenomenon may harm democracy.

(Technology such as social media) “lets you go off with like-minded people, so you're not mixing and sharing and understanding other points of view ... It's super important. It's turned out to be more of a problem than I, or many others, would have expected.”

Contents

Search Encrypt was created in 2016 by a group of developers. In November 2017, the site had 22.74 million visitors. [4] Search Encrypt is also available as a browser extension for Google Chrome. It is currently listed in the Chrome Web Store. [5]

Google Chrome Web browser developed by Google

Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, and was later ported to Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android. The browser is also the main component of Chrome OS, where it serves as the platform for web apps.

The company is based in Limassol, Cyprus. [6] and has 10 employees. The name was derived from the products main features.

Limassol Place in Limassol District, Cyprus

Limassol is a city on the southern coast of Cyprus and capital of the eponymous district. Limassol is the second largest urban area in Cyprus after Nicosia, with an urban population of 183,658 and a metropolitan population of 239,842. Limassol has been ranked by TripAdvisor as the 3rd up-and-coming destination in the world, in its Top 10 Traveler’s Choice Destinations on the Rise. The city is also ranked 89th worldwide in Mercer's Quality of Living Survey (2017). In the ranking published by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, Limassol has been classified global city in the 4th category.

Cyprus Island country in Mediterranean

Cyprus, officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the Eastern Mediterranean and the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean, located south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of Israel, north of Egypt, and southeast of Greece.

Overview

Search Encrypt works by encrypting user search terms locally with AES-256 encryption. Qualys SSL Labs reports that Search Encrypt's servers use SSL encryption. [7] Search Encrypt earns revenue by serving ads.

Advanced Encryption Standard block cipher standard

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael, is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001.

Qualys, Inc. provides cloud security, compliance and related services and is based in Foster City, California. Founded in 1999, Qualys was the first company to deliver vulnerability management solutions as applications through the web using a "software as a service" (SaaS) model, and as of 2013 Gartner Group for the fifth time gave Qualys a "Strong Positive" rating for these services. It has added cloud-based compliance and web application security offerings.

Transport Layer Security (TLS), and its now-deprecated predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communications security over a computer network. Several versions of the protocols find widespread use in applications such as web browsing, email, instant messaging, and voice over IP (VoIP). Websites can use TLS to secure all communications between their servers and web browsers.

According to Search Encrypt's FAQ page, "Search Encrypt utilizes a client side encryption using a short lived key to encrypt your queries before sending them to our servers. The key expires shortly after the final use. [8] " Search Encrypt differentiates itself from other search engines by putting privacy first. The website's blog claims that Search Encrypt has "better privacy by default" than DuckDuckGo. [9]

DuckDuckGo Internet search engine

DuckDuckGo (DDG) is an Internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo distinguishes itself from other search engines by not profiling its users and by showing all users the same search results for a given search term, and emphasizes returning the best results, rather than the most results, generating those results from over 400 individual sources, including crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, and other search engines like Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex. In April 2019, it had 36,827,098 daily direct searches on average.

SearchEncrypt.com's homepage states that users' search data "can no longer be viewed after 15 minutes of inactivity". Keyword autocomplete is operating via private browsing, Tor and VPN.

The domain name com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name is derived from the word commercial, indicating its original intended purpose for domains registered by commercial organizations. Later, the domain opened for general purposes.

Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the tab key to accept a suggestion or the down arrow key to accept one of several.

Private browsing Privacy feature in some web browsers

Private browsing, privacy mode or incognito mode is a privacy feature in some web browsers to disable browsing history and the web cache. This allows a person to browse the Web without storing local data that could be retrieved at a later date. Privacy mode will also disable the storage of data in cookies and Flash cookies. This privacy protection is only within the browser application as it may leave traces on the hard drive and memory of the device, or via websites by associating the IP address at the web server.

Search Encrypt is a search engine, so it's used to find websites and information on the internet. It's a private search engine so people rely on Search Encrypt for sensitive searches that they don't want other people to know about. People also use Search Encrypt to avoid seeing ads everywhere they go for something they've searched for recently.

Avoiding Annoying Ads

It can be annoying if you search for something you aren't interested in, but you had another reason to look it up. You may then see tons of ads for that thing, even if you aren't interested in buying it.

Hiding Sensitive Searches

There are a number of reasons you may want to keep your searches private. You may have a health condition that you don't want other people, or your search engine to know about. A private search engine, like Search Encrypt, lets you research topics without revealing sensitive details about yourself. Most search engines leave your searches in your browser history so anyone with access to your computer can see what you've searched for. Search Encrypt expires the encryption key for your search terms so when you've finished searching your search disappears forever. [10]

Limiting Google's Power

Data companies are growing more and more powerful all the time, and the data they collect is more and more specific and complex. Google is the leader in data collection and use for advertising purposes. Because they have so much information about billions of people, they have a huge advantage over any other company when it comes to internet advertising. By limiting the data that you give to Google, you can minimize the impact that the company can have on you personally.

Search Encrypt Browser Extension

Search Encrypt is available as a browser extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. [11] [12] Its extension sets Search Encrypt as users' default search engine and redirects non-private searches to its private search engine. This makes Search Encrypt more convenient by eliminating extra steps you would otherwise have to take to search.

See also

Related Research Articles

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS), or, formerly, its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). The protocol is therefore also often referred to as HTTP over TLS, or HTTP over SSL.

Web browser software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web

A web browser is a software application for accessing information on the World Wide Web. Each individual web page, image, and video is identified by a distinct Uniform Resource Locator (URL), enabling browsers to retrieve these resources from a web server and display them on the user's device.

The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is an Internet protocol used for obtaining the revocation status of an X.509 digital certificate. It is described in RFC 6960 and is on the Internet standards track. It was created as an alternative to certificate revocation lists (CRL), specifically addressing certain problems associated with using CRLs in a public key infrastructure (PKI). Messages communicated via OCSP are encoded in ASN.1 and are usually communicated over HTTP. The "request/response" nature of these messages leads to OCSP servers being termed OCSP responders.

Comparison of web browsers Wikimedia list article

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers.

A browser extension is a small software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, ad blocking, and cookie management.

UC Browser browser developed by the mobile Internet company UCWeb

UC Browser is a web browser developed by the Chinese mobile Internet company UCWeb, which is in turn owned by the Alibaba Group. As of December 2018 it is the fourth most popular mobile browser in the world by market share, after Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Originally launched in April 2004 as a J2ME-only application, it is available on a number of platforms including Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS, Java ME, Symbian, Windows Phone and Microsoft Windows.

Mitto is a free online password management site that works on any standards-compliant web browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. For website passwords, Mitto can automatically log users in through an online interface, through a special bookmarklet, or through one of its available browser extensions. The service has been designed to work with many of the most popular websites, but can be used to log into any website. Unlike other traditional password management software, Mitto is software as a service (SaaS) and is web-based, so there is nothing to download or install in order to use the service.

Epic (web browser) web browser

Epic is a privacy-centric web browser. It was developed by Hidden Reflex from Chromium source code. Epic is always in "private browsing mode". Exiting the browser causes all browsing data to be deleted. Even during browsing as little as possible is stored. Epic removed all Google tracking and blocks other companies from tracking users.

Comodo Dragon

Comodo Dragon is a freeware web browser. It is based on Chromium and is produced by Comodo Group. Sporting a similar interface to Google Chrome, Dragon does not implement Chrome's user tracking and some other potentially privacy-compromising features, substituting them for its own user tracking implementations, and provides additional security measures, such as indicating the authenticity and relative strength of a website's SSL certificate.

Ghostery is a free and open-source privacy and security-related browser extension and mobile browser application. Since February 2017, it has been owned by the German company Cliqz International GmbH. The code was originally developed by David Cancel and associates.

Search engines are listed in tables below for comparison purposes. The first table lists the company behind the engine, volume and ad support and identifies the nature of the software being used as free software or proprietary. The second table lists privacy aspects along with other technical parameters, such as whether the engine provides personalization.

Torch (browser)

Torch is a Chromium-based web browser and Internet suite developed by Torch Media. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying websites, sharing websites via social networks, downloading torrents, accelerating downloads and grabbing online media, all directly from the browser. Torch Browser is commercial freeware.

HTTPS Everywhere is a free and open-source browser extension for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Brave, and Firefox for Android, which is developed collaboratively by The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). It automatically makes websites use a more secure HTTPS connection instead of HTTP, if they support it. The option "Block all HTTP requests" makes it possible to block and unblock all non-HTTPS browser connections with one click.

Regarding privacy concerns with the technology corporation Google, Google's privacy change enables the company to share data across a wide variety of services. These embedded services include millions of third-party websites that use Adsense and Analytics. The policy was widely criticized for creating an environment that discourages Internet-innovation by making Internet users more fearful and wary of what they put online.

Brave (web browser) Free and open-source web browser based on Chromium

Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. The browser blocks ads and website trackers. In a future version of the browser, the company has proposed adopting a pay-to-surf business model. Giving users BAT for viewing advertisements that can be tipped to creators or converted into another crypto-currency.

AdGuard

AdGuard is a line of ad blocking and privacy protection software which comprises open-source and shareware products that protect Microsoft Windows, Linux, OS X, Android and iOS users from unwanted ads, pop-ups, banners, as well as from tracking, obscene content, malware and phishing. A cross-platform utility, AdGuard is also available as an extension for the most widely used browsers, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, Yandex.Browser, and Microsoft Edge. Over 5 million people are reported to be using the software in 2018.

References

  1. ↑ "SearchEncrypt.com Traffic, Demographics and Competitors". Alexa Internet . Retrieved 14 May 2019.
  2. ↑ "Search Encrypt Adds Privacy-Friendly News Search - Search Encrypt Blog". Search Encrypt Blog. 2018-08-07. Retrieved 2018-08-07.
  3. ↑ "Remove Search Encrypt (Removal Guide) - updated Aug 2018". Spyware.com. Retrieved 2018-08-03.
  4. ↑ "Searchencrypt.com Analytics - Market Share Stats & Traffic Ranking". www.similarweb.com. Retrieved 2017-12-19.
  5. ↑ "Search Encrypt". chrome.google.com. Retrieved 2018-01-02.
  6. ↑ "Contact Search Encrypt". www.searchencrypt.com. Retrieved 2017-12-19.
  7. ↑ "SSL Server Test (Powered by Qualys SSL Labs)". www.ssllabs.com. Retrieved 2018-01-10.
  8. ↑ "FAQ". www.searchencrypt.com. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
  9. ↑ "Search Encrypt Has Better Privacy By Default Than DuckDuckGo - Search Encrypt Blog". Search Encrypt Blog. 2018-07-13. Retrieved 2018-08-20.
  10. ↑ Info, Shield Your (2019-04-24). "DuckDuckGo Doesn't Hide Your Search History". Shield Your Info. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
  11. ↑ "Search Encrypt – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)". addons.mozilla.org. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
  12. ↑ "Search Encrypt". chrome.google.com. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
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