Over the years, online privacy gained massive awareness because of many privacy scandals.
Most popular search engines can collect your data to sell targeted ad space and share or sell your data to third parties unknown to you. Your data could be used for identity theft, cybercrime, etc.
Because of these problems, no-tracking search engines have become more popular.
What is a no-tracking search engine?
No-tracking search engines provide high-quality results without exposing your identity or tracking you online.
These engines eliminate user profiles. Without these profiles, targeted data collection is not possible.
If you want to protect your privacy, here are the six best searching engines that don’t track you – and never will.
1. Swisscows
Swisscows is partnered with Bing and is based in Switzerland. It is available in eight languages, including English.
This search engine uses semantic technology to gather the most beneficial user search results. Moreover, it is highly trustworthy because it doesn’t track or store personal user information.
And all of its servers are located in a country known for strict privacy laws – Switzerland. The Swisscows interface is user-friendly and modern.
It offers many other tools, such as a translator similar to Google Translate.
2. DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a popular no-tracking search engine.
This search engine saves searches but does not relate them to an individual user. It uses your IP address to identify your approximate location but is immediately deleted.
It has its crawler but also pulls information from other sources such as Bing and Wikipedia.
That might be the best private search engine for user experience.
The interface is quite similar to Google and other popular search engines. You can search the entire web or filter out your search.
Many additional features come with this engine, such as infinite scrolling and auto-suggest.
3. Searx
Searx is very different from other search engines. It is a metasearch engine, which means it can collect the results of several search engines at once.
Searx provides unique and customizable search results for any search term. And it also maintains a high standard of privacy, where users are not tracked or profiled. If you want complete online anonymity, Searx can be used over Tor.
Searx has about 70 supported search engines and integrates with any search engine.
It offers secure, encrypted connections and does not use cookies by default.
4. Brave Search
Brave was first created as a private browser, and then they decided to include a search engine – Brave Search.
It is still in the beta phase, but it’s highly functional.
This search engine delivers content from an independent index while keeping your data intact. It integrates with the Brave browser and uses its web crawlers and index.
Most searches originate from the Brave Search index but are occasionally pulled from other sources when deemed unreliable.
Brave Search will keep you from being tracked regardless of where your results come from.
5. Startpage
Startpage has a very similar look to Google.
That is unique since other no-track search engines mostly rely on Bing. This search engine uses Google’s results but doesn’t track or collect your data.
It offers many features, one of them being Anonymous View.
Beside each link is an icon of a domino mask you can click to open the web page in Anonymous View. That will allow you to access the website through an encrypted proxy server. Hence it works almost like a VPN.
With Startpage, you can customize your results and search criteria.
6. Ecosia
Last but not least a unique search engine – Ecosia.
Ecosia is run by a nonprofit company that uses 80% revenue to plant trees worldwide.
This search engine anonymizes half of your IP address, transfers data over an SSL-secured connection, and avoids unique event fingerprinting. Ecosia doesn’t sell or share data with third parties.
Besides keeping your data private and preventing you from being tracked, this engine also supports environmental causes.
Final Words
In an age where privacy matters more than ever, this list of no-tracking search engines can help you on your way to safety.
