Privacy, Google, and Web Browsers

[mikebulriss]

David,

I feel your pain and frustration. And I agree with your distrust of Google.

I have not used Pale Moon, but I used Opera and a couple other smaller less well known browsers for a while. After many website issues reaching certain sites, I returned to FireFox, which uses Yahoo as it's default search engine now, in place of Google. Additionally, you can change your default search engine to DuckDuckGo or numerous other choices, including back to Google. FireFox also has Private Window option for supposedly anonymous surfing.

But it is not just searches that are a problem, it is the trackers once you get to a site. I think one of the biggest offenders is Amazon as far as spamming you after a search on their site, if you signed in, which seems automatic on that site once you ever have a sign on.

In reality, you need multiple layers of protection. I added Ghostery add-on to each web browser I use. It blocks the real time trackers when you go to a website. It is amazing to see how many tracker beacons pop up immediately each time you initially go to a site. I run the blocked site list for 3 seconds in a small window just to watch it work.

At least every two or three days I run SUPERAntiSpyware in the background to root out adware tracking cookies that get set by the site after you get there. Then about once a week I run Malwarebytes to look for serious viruses and trojans (that's on top of running UnHackMe in real time).

It may seem like overkill, but thus far, no viruses and no identifiable spam from my searches, other than from Amazon.

FWIW, YMMV, yadda yadda.......