Use Multiple Profiles Simultaneously in Chrome to Separate Out Work from Personal

Last year Google started to play around with adding profiles to the Chrome browser, and I feel like its usefulness is often overlooked. Most people attribute having multiple user profiles with being able to share a computer between multiple family members. You may not think about how useful it could be to have multiple profiles for yourself.

Personally I rely on Google Chrome’s multiple profiles each and every day. I generally keep multiple user profiles to help separate my work and personal stuff on some of my machines. Each Google Chrome profile can run simultaneously, and each one will have its own icon on the Windows Taskbar. The Taskbar icon will place the profile’s avatar in the bottom-right corner of the Chrome icon so that you can distinguish between them.

The other thing I like about creating multiple profiles is that each one can get tied to its own Google account for syncing. I have one Google account for personal, and another for work. All my bookmarks and extensions are synced across machines, which helps provide some independence from the machine you need to use. It’s really nice having full access to both my personal and work-related bookmarks available on the same machine while still keeping them separated.

So how do you set up new users/profiles in Chrome? Just click on the wrench icon and pull up the Settings. When you scroll down a little bit you should see a Users section toward the bottom. Click the Add new user button and a new Chrome window should immediately pop up. You are now running two Chrome profiles simultaneously. You can always use a single window and switch between profiles by clicking on the profile’s icon located in the upper-left corner of the Chrome window. When you click on the icon it will list out all of the available accounts on the machine.

That’s all there is to it. Now with this little trick you can easily separate out your personal and work stuff while still retaining quick access to data from both on the same machine.

14 Special Google Searches That Show Instant Answers

Google can do more than display lists of websites – Google will give you quick answers to many special searches. While Google isn’t quite as advanced as Wolfram Alpha, it has quite a few tricks up its sleeve.

We’ve also covered searching Google like a pro by learning the Google search operators – if you want to master Google, be sure to learn those.

Calculator

You can use Google as a calculator – just type in a quick calculation and Google will provide an answer. Google now offers a clickable calculator tool when you search for a calculation, so you can use Google like you’d use a calculator application on your desktop or smartphone.

Unit Conversions

Google can also convert between a variety of units. Just type a search in the form X unit to unit. For example, 40 degrees f to c converts 40 degrees Fahrenheit to Celsius.

As with the calculator, the unit conversion tool is clickable.

You can also combine unit conversations and math. For example, the search two miles plus 500 yards in kilometers will return a valid answer.

Currency Conversions

Google can also do currency conversions for you. You can do a search such as usd to cadto see the exchange rate between two currencies, or do a search such as 500 usd to cadto see how much a certain amount of currency is worth in another currency.

Your IP Address

You can determine your current public IP address by typing what is my ip into Google – or just search for my ip.

Weather

To see the weather in a specific location, search for weather location – for example, search for weather new york to see a weather forecast for New York. If you enterweather without a location, Google will show you the weather for your current area.

Sunrise and Sunset

You can also view the sunrise or sunset times for a location by typing sunrise location orsunset location. Like with the weather search, searching for sunrise or sunset without a location will show you the sunrise or sunset times for your current location.

Times

View the current time for a location by typing time location – for example, searching fortime paris will show you the current time in Paris, France.  Like with the weather searches, searching for time without a location will show you the current time where you are.

Package Tracking

If you want to track a package, you can enter a UPS, USPS, or Fedex tracking number directly in the Google search box. Google will link you to the appropriate package-tracking page.

Dictionary Definitions

To view the dictionary definition for a word, search for define word – Google will show you the definition of the word, along with a button you can click to hear the word pronounced aloud.

Flight Tracking

View the status of a flight by typing an airline name followed by a flight number.

Flight Schedules

Search for available flights by searching for flights from city to city. Google will show you a list of available flights along with their prices, durations, and airlines – you can enter your dates and locate flights right from the search page.

Movie Schedules

Want to see a movie in a theater? Search for movies followed by your postal code to view a list of movies playing near you.

Data

You can view many types of data for different cities and countries, such as the population and unemployment rate, by searching for them. For example, searching for population location will show you the population of that location, whether it’s a city, state, or country.

Stock Information

View about a stock, including its price and a graph of its price history, by searching for any stock symbol on Google.

How To Change Your DNS Servers & Improve Internet Security

Imagine this – you wake up one beautiful morning, pour yourself a cup of coffee, and then sit down at your computer to get started with your work for the day. Before you actually get stuff done, you go over to your favorite browser and type in http://www.makeuseof.com. Within seconds, you’re looking at our website and all of our latest posts.

But hold on, how the heck did your computer even know where to find MakeUseOf? How does it even know what http://www.makeuseof.com even means? It finds out by using a core technology which exists throughout the Internet called DNS, or Domain Name System.

Tell Me More About DNS!

DNS is a backbone component of the Internet which helps in name resolution. In layman’s terms, DNS helps turn a web address, also known as a URL, like http://www.makeuseof.com into an actual location, called an IP address. IP addresses are in the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, where all the x’s are a bunch of different numbers. Your computer knows how to reach those IP addresses, but it doesn’t directly know what to make out of URLs, which were created to make it easier to remember websites. DNS servers are there to help with this so that we can browse without having to think about what’s actually happening.

The thing is, there isn’t a single, central DNS server which everyone has to access in order to resolve a URL. There are many, many different DNS servers in the world, which can be found at places such as your ISP or third-party services such as OpenDNS. In fact, you’re most likely using your ISP’s DNS servers right now if you haven’t changed any of your computer’s or router’s settings. Although you’d like to trust your ISP, their servers are most likely simple. Simple in that they literally only resolve URLs, and nothing more. They usually don’t focus on increasing security, because these servers can be at risk of cyber attacks as well.

Possible Results Of An Attack

When a DNS server is attacked, there’s a few different things that could happen. First, the server could just simply crash or otherwise go offline, so you won’t be able to browse around as you would normally do until your ISP fixes the issue. Second, the attacker could change DNS records on the server, and point certain URLs to false lookalike pages. This is an especially dangerous attack because phishing attacks are usually recognizable by a weird URL, but with a tainted DNS server, the URL will appear exactly what it should be, but you’d still be on the false page.

What Can I Do?

Therefore, the best safety practice is to switch to a more secure DNS server which is better supported. There’s a good number of DNS services you can choose from, but there are two I highly recommend. If you want a no-gimmick DNS experience that you can trust, you should try Google’s Public DNS servers. These are run by the search giant itself and are highly maintained, so you won’t have to worry about any issues or attacks. For a more feature-rich DNS experience, I’d recommend OpenDNS, which has special options to prevent certain types of attacks and even includes a customizable web filter.

How Do I Switch?

Once you’ve settled on the DNS server you’d like to switch to, you’ll need to change your system’s settings in order to use them. The methods of changing these settings vary greatly depending on the operating system.

• Windows users will need to go into their network device’s properties, then go into the IPv4 properties, and then change the DNS servers in the bottom section of the window.
• Mac OS X users will need to go into their System Preferences, click on “Network“, choose their network device, click on “Advanced”, and then enter DNS servers after clicking on the DNS tab.
• Linux users will need to click on their network applet, choose Edit Connections, click on “Edit” for your network device, and under the “IPv4 Settings” tab, choose the “Automatic (DHCP) addresses only” profile, and then add the DNS servers into the DNS servers textbox, with each server address separated by a comma.
• Even Android users can change their DNS server, but it only goes into effect while you’re using WiFi. Therefore, you can find the appropriate settings when you hit the Menu button and choose “Advanced” while you’re in the WiFi setup screen. For quick reference, Google’s DNS servers are at the addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, while OpenDNS’s servers are at 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

Conclusion

Issues that can exist with DNS servers are a bigger issue than a lot of people think, because rarely anyone ever talks about them and mentions switching to different ones. Plus it’s a “confusing” backbone component of the Internet, which makes people even more reluctant to talk about it. Consider switching as a precaution so you know you’ll be safe.

Which DNS server(s) are you using? What made you choose it over other options? Let us know in the comments!

7 Top Secret Features Of The Free VLC Media Player

If someone gave me the choice of picking just one media player to take to a deserted island, I would most definitely plonk for VideoLan’s VLC Media Player. I really don’t know whether I would get too much of a chance to watch anything while I am marooned there, but when it comes to versatility, no other player comes close. Thank God! VLC Media Player is free. It is Open Source and cross-platform too.

That VLC pretty much plays everything that you throw at it is old news. It is also a media genie when it comes to other things apart from playing movies. We looked at some of them in two previous posts:

• Streaming Services: A Whole New Side To VLC Player You Probably Didn’t Know About
• 6 Cool VLC Tips & Tricks You Might Not Know About

In the latter post, we talked about what VLC can do…

• Rip & Transcode Videos
• Internet Radio & Podcast Management
• Video Effects
• Snapshots
• Play Video as ASCII Output

But there are still some ‘top secret’ features left to talk about. So, let’s spill the beans.

Use VLC as an Online Video Downloader for YouTube

Using a combination of VLC and your browser, you can download videos from YouTube and a few other video sites. Copy the URL of the video you want to download. For instance, in YouTube it could be like this:

1. Click on Media – Open Network stream. Paste the URL and click the Play button in the player.

2. VLC Media Player starts streaming the video.  Now, click Tools – Codec Information and at the bottom of the window you will see a Location box. Copy the long URL in the box and paste it on your browser’s address bar. The browser will now start playing the video file. You can download the video file to your desktop by doing a Save As…. Or you can choose to record the video.

I tried this out with YouTube. Let us know in the comments about other services too.

Don’t Forget…VLC Can Play Audio Too!

We normally associate VLC with video, but VLC is a complete media player and that includes full music-playing features with playlist support. VLC not only displays cover art, but also has a pretty good graphic equalizer tucked away inside it.

You can bring it up with a CTRL+E. Pitch your song just right with the available presets, or finetune it with the 11 frequency bands.

The latest VLC also gives you Dynamic Range Compression that subdues loud sounds or amplifies quiet sounds by compressing an audio signal’s dynamic range. That’s just the thing if you are living in an apartment with thin walls.

Then there’s Audio Normalization

Just in case you don’t jump out of your skin, VLC has the normalization feature tucked deep inside Audio preferences (Tools – Preferences – Audio). It’s a feature to keep in mind when you are playing audio and video files; a sudden increase in the volume could jar your ears. In case of video, you have to restart the video for it to take effect.

Record Directly From Webcam

You can record your video chat session easily using VLC.

1. Go to Media – Open Capture Device.

2. On the Capture Device screen, you can select the video device and also the audio device like the system microphone.

3. You can also configure the options from the Configure settings. Finetune your capture with Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation (and other) controls.

4. Head down and drop down the Play button to open the Convert dialog where you can select theDestination file, click on the Browse button to select video file location, name and format.

Scrobble Tracks to Last.fm

Last.fm added support to VLC and that helps because you can enhance your recommendations by scrobbling from your desktop music collection to Last.fm using the VideoLan media player. Scrobbling tracks to Last.fm with what you listen to on your desktop is a simple three-step process –

1. From Tools – Preferences click the Show Settings radio button to All.

2. Drop down to Interfaces. Expand the branch to Control Interfaces – check Submission of played song to Last.fm.

3. Expand Control Interfaces and click on Audioscrobbler. Enter your login details on this screen, hit save and restart  VLC.

Mouse Gesture Interactions with VLC

Productivity mavens like their mouse gestures, and VLC media player obliges with basic mouse gesture support. To activate this feature, go to View – Add Interface – Mouse Gestures. You may need to restart VLC for the changes to take effect. The list of supported gestures and settings options can be on this pageof the VideoLAN wiki.

Automatically Quit VLC When Playback Is Over (And Shut down The Computer)

Queue your songs in a playlist (Kenny G’s saxophone perhaps), switch off the lights, and drift off to sleep. Oh wait! Did you forget to switch off the VLC player and shut down the computer? Stay in bed because a little line of code can do it for you.

You can quit VLC media player after playback is finished, by adding

vlc://quit

to the playlist. Alternatively, from Media select Quit at the end of playlist.

Shutting down the computer is a bit more elaborate with a batch file.

Create a new file with extension .BAT [use notepad] and paste in the contents from below:

START /WAIT C:\"Program Files"\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe %1 vlc://quit
shutdown -s -t 60

Drag your saved playlist icon on top of the .bat file. The batch file will launch VLC and load the playlist. It will wait for the playlist to finish playing and then the batch file shut down the PC in 60 sec.’s.

I end here with seven useful features of the ever-popular VLC media player. There are lots more of course. If you know about these seven features then they aren’t ‘top secret’ at all, but if you didn’t then try them out. Which feature of the VLC media player deserves to get mentioned? Do you know of a VLC feature that you think not many are aware of? Reveal it in the comments. We are all ears for secrets to be spilled.

How To Change Your IP Address Using Tor Browser Bundle

An IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) is essentially your digital fingerprint on the internet. Wherever you visit websites or use Internet services, your IP is also transmitted and recorded in the logs kept on those servers. The legal practical use of these IPs are for security purposes. For example if someone from another country tries to login to your Facebook account, the page will recognize that the IP address is from a different location and he won’t be able to log in.

So, Why do I need to Hide my IP Address?

As i said above, your IP is your digital fingerprint. So, if you’re doing something you’re not supposed to be doing, someone can grab your IP address and track you down.

The bottom line is this: Your IP address was never meant to be a secret. Whatever you do on the Internet, your IP address is known not only to you, but to your ISP and the admins of the site you’re connecting with. So, you are telling them your IP just by using your network.

If you like to keep your privacy online, it’s necessary to change your IP address.

There are many methods to change or hide your IP address, but in this tutorial I am going how to show you how to do that by using the Tor Browser Bundle. This bundle contains everything you need to anonymously browse the Internet. This package requires no installation. Just extract it and run.

Here is a step-by-step video guide that will show you how to install and use Tor Browser Bundle:

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Hope you find this tutorial useful. Enjoy 

47 Keyboard Shortcuts That Work in All Web Browsers

Each major web browser shares a large number of keyboard shortcuts in common. Whether you’re using Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, or Opera – these keyboard shortcuts will work in your browser.

Each browser also has some of its own, browser-specific shortcuts, but learning the ones they have in common will serve you well as you switch between different browsers and computers. This list includes a few mouse actions, too.

Tabs

Ctrl+1-8 – Switch to the specified tab, counting from the left.

Ctrl+9 – Switch to the last tab.

Ctrl+Tab – Switch to the next tab – in other words, the tab on the right. (Ctrl+Page Upalso works, but not in Internet Explorer.)

Ctrl+Shift+Tab – Switch to the previous tab – in other words, the tab on the left. (Ctrl+Page Down also works, but not in Internet Explorer.)

Ctrl+W, Ctrl+F4 – Close the current tab.

Ctrl+Shift+T – Reopen the last closed tab.

Ctrl+T – Open a new tab.

Ctrl+N – Open a new browser window.

Alt+F4 – Close the current window. (Works in all applications.)

Mouse Actions for Tabs

Middle Click a Tab – Close the tab.

Ctrl+Left Click, Middle Click – Open a link in a background tab.

Shift+Left Click – Open a link in a new browser window.

Ctrl+Shift+Left Click – Open a link in a foreground tab.

Navigation

Alt+Left Arrow, Backspace – Back.

Alt+Right Arrow, Shift+Backspace – Forward.

F5 – Reload.

Shift+F5 – Reload and skip the cache, re-downloading the entire website.

Escape – Stop.

Alt+Home – Open homepage.

Zooming

Ctrl and +, Ctrl+Mousewheel Up – Zoom in.

Ctrl and -, Ctrl+Mousewheel Down — Zoom out.

Ctrl+0 – Default zoom level.

F11 – Full-screen mode.

Scrolling

Space, Page Down – Scroll down a frame.

Page Up – Scroll up a frame.

Home – Top of page.

End – Bottom of page.

Middle Click – Scroll with the mouse.

Address Bar

Ctrl+L, Alt+D, F6 – Focus the address bar so you can begin typing.

Ctrl+Enter – Prefix www. and append .com to the text in the address bar, and then load the website. For example, type howtogeek into the address bar and press Ctrl+Enter to open www.howtogeek.com.

Alt+Enter – Open the location in the address bar in a new tab.

Search

Ctrl+K, Ctrl+E – Focus the browser’s built-in search box or focus the address bar if the browser doesn’t have a dedicated search box. (Ctrl+K doesn’t work in IE, Ctrl+E does.)

Alt+Enter – Perform a search from the search box in a new tab.

Ctrl+F, F3 – Open the in-page search box to search on the current page.

Ctrl+G, F3 – Find the next match of the searched text on the page.

Ctrl+Shift+G, Shift+F3 – Find the previous match of the searched text on the page.

History & Bookmarks

Ctrl+H – Open the browsing history.

Ctrl+J – Open the download history.

Ctrl+D – Bookmark the current website.

Ctrl+Shift+Del – Open the Clear Browsing History window.

Other Functions

Ctrl+P – Print the current page.

Ctrl+S – Save the current page to your computer.

Ctrl+O – Open a file from your computer.

Ctrl+U – Open the current page’s source code. (Not in IE.)

F12 – Open Developer Tools. (Not in Firefox.)

---

Does one of these keyboard shortcuts not work in a specific browser, or is there another important one we missed here? Leave a comment and let us know.

Backup & Restore Your Wi-Fi Passwords

By default all operating systems, including Linux, save passwords of previously connected Wi-Fi access points. There are ways to export these saved passwords to be used in other computers. Third party software like LastPass and WirelessKeyView can save your saved passwords, and import them to other computers. Mac users can use LastPass and 1Password to save their passwords, including Wi-Fi passwords.

Windows 7

Windows 7 by default saves the password that you enter while connecting to internet through Wi-Fi. Saved passwords can be backed up in a USB drive, but the only drawback is that passwords have to be exported one at a time for each Wi-Fi network. To save a Wi-Fi key/password, click on thewireless network symbol on the taskbar and click the Open Network and Sharing Center. In the Network Sharing Center window, click on Manage Wireless Network and you will see all your wireless networks listed in the Manage Wireless network window. Double click on the network that you want to export, and you will be taken to the properties page; in the properties page, select the option Copy this network profile to a USB flash drive. Follow the setting wizard instructions and you are good to go. The USB drive will have the setupSNK.exe file and a SMRTNTKY folder.

Use the USB drive to import the settings to different computers having Windows software (XP, Vista, 7).
To import the settings insert the USB device in your computer and run the setupSNK.exe file. On clicking the setupSNK.exe file, you will be prompted by a message window. Click yes to download the settings on to your computer.

LastPass

LastPass is utility software that manages passwords, be it for websites or Wi-Fi networks. Best part of LastPass is that it installs on to the browser as an extension. It has a feature to export and import Wi-Fi passwords; this feature is only available in version 1.9 or higher. You may need to run the Universal Installer to download this feature. When encountered with an error simple follow on screen instructions to run the Universal Installer. Passwords are saved into the LastPass Vault, which is sync with your computer.

Open your web browser and click the LastPass button. Select tools and go to Import From. Then click Wi- Fi Passwords and click Import in the new tab to save the saved Wi-Fi settings from your computer. You can use the check boxes to select networks that you want to import. Log on to LastPass from a different computer and select Export To (below Import From) and then Wi-Fi Passwords to download the settings on to your computer.

1Password

Similar to LastPass, 1Password is a password manager that saves and generates passwords. It’s available for Windows, Mac, Ipad and Android. Mac users have the option to use either Wi-Fi or Dropbox to sync their data with 1Password manager. Windows users just need to use Dropbox to sync all their data.
 

Ipad users can use the option Backup & Restore to backup their data. To do so, open 1Password and select Settings> Data> Backup & Restore. Remember that both your computer and IOS should be on the same Wi-Fi network to perform this process. Apple doesn’t allow third party apps to sync via USB drive.

WirelessKeyView

This software recovers all the stored wireless network keys/passwords in your computer. You can save the information in text/html/xml file. Best thing about this software is that it’s a freeware, unlike LastPass and 1Password. Be sure to download the latest version to get all the options. This software only works on Windows machine, starting from Windows XP.

Download the software from Nirsoft’s website and double click the .exe file. On start up, the program will show all saved wireless passwords in a list form. You can save the network that you want to export in to a text file by selecting Save Selected Items from file menu.

All above software products provide a myriad of features; however, WirelessKeyView only provides basic features like converting information regarding wireless network settings into text files. LastPass is the most versatile in respect to platform, because any operating system that can run Mozilla Firefox web browser can use LastPass; the software just installs an extension for the browser and supports Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. Windows 7 user can rejoice as it has the option to export wireless network information on USB drive, and they don’t need to download anything extra for exporting Wi-Fi
passwords.

How to Create Your Own Customized Run Commands

The Run command on Microsoft Windows operating system allows you to directly open an application or document with just a single command instead of navigating to it’s location and double-clicking the executable icon. However, it only works for some of the inbuilt Windows programs such as Command prompt (cmd), Calculator (calc) etc. So, have you ever wondered how to create your own customized Run commands for accessing your favorite programs, files and folders? Well, read on to find out the answer.

Creating the Customized Run Command

 

Let me take up an example of how to create a customized run command for opening the Internet explorer. Once you create this command, you should be able to open the Internet explorer just by typing “ie” (without quotes) in the Run dialog box. Here is how you can do that.

1. Right click on your Desktop and select New -> Shortcut.

2. You will see a “Create Shortcut” Dialog box as shown below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Click on “Browse”, navigate to: Program Files -> Internet Explorer from your Root drive (usually C:\) and select “iexplore” as shown in the above figure and click on “OK”.

4. Now click on “Next” and type any name for your shortcut. You can choose any name as per your choice; this will be your customized “Run command”. In this case I name my shortcut as “ie”. Click on “Finish”.

5. You will see a shortcut named “ie” on your desktop. All you need to do is just copy this shortcut and paste it in your Windows folder (usually “C:/Windows”). Once you have copied the shortcut onto your Windows folder, you can delete the one on your Desktop.

6. That’s it! From now on, just open the Run dialog box, type ie and hit Enter to open the Internet Explorer.

In this way you can create customized Run commands for any program of your choice. Say “ff” for Firefox, “ym” for Yahoo messenger, “wmp” for Windows media player and so on.

To do this, when you click on “Browse” in the Step-3, just select the target program’s main executable (.exe) file which will usually be located in the C:\Program Files folder. Give a simple and short name for this shortcut as per your choice and copy the shortcut file onto the Windows folder as usual. Now just type this short name in the Run dialog box to open the program.

5 Alternative Search Engines That Respect Your Privacy

Google, Bing, Yahoo – all the major search engines track your search history and build profiles on you, serving different results based on your search history. Try one of these alternative search engines if you’re tired of being tracked.

Google now encrypts your search traffic when you’re logged in, but this only prevents third-parties from snooping on your search traffic – it doesn’t prevent Google from tracking you.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for the privacy-conscious. As its privacy pagesays, DuckDuckGo doesn’t log any personally identifiable information. DuckDuckGo doesn’t use cookies to identify you, and it discards user agents and IP addresses from its server logs. DuckDuckGo doesn’t event attempt to generate an anonymized identifier to tie searches together – DuckDuckGo has no way of knowing whether two searches even came from the same computer.

Its home page is simple and clean – even more so than Google’s.

Because DuckDuckGo knows nothing about you, it can’t serve different results to different users. You’ll get the same results as everyone else.

DuckDuckGo’s donttrack.us page explains search engine tracking and DuckDuckGo’s approach in an entertaining way.

Startpage

If you prefer Google’s search results and just want more privacy, try Ixquick’s Startpage. Startpage searches Google for you – when you submit a search, Startpage submits the search to Google and returns the results to you. All Google sees is a large amount of searches coming from Startpage’s servers – they can’t tie any searches to you or track your searches.

Startpage discards all personally identifiable information. Like DuckDuckGo, Startpage doesn’t use cookies, it immediately discards IP addresses, and it doesn’t keep a record of searches performed.

If you’ve heard of Scroogle – a Google scraper that no longer exists – Startpage is a similar service.

Startpage also includes a proxy feature — you can open a page in Ixquick’s proxy directly from the search results. This is slower than normal browsing, but websites won’t be able to see your IP address. The proxy also disables JavaScript to protect your privacy.

Ixquick

Ixquick is the main search engine from the company that runs Startpage. Unlike Startpage, Ixquick pulls results from a variety of sources instead of only Google – this can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how much you like Google’s search results.

Ixquick and Startpage have essentially the same design. Ixquick includes the same privacy features Startpage does, including the Ixquick proxy links in the search results.

Blekko

Blekko doesn’t go as far as DuckDuckGo and Ixquick, but it’s still a big improvement over Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Blekko does log personally identifiable information, but deletes it within 48 hours. In contrast, Google stores this information for 9 months – and then anonymizes it without actually deleting it.

If you create an account and log in, you can disable the data collection entirely by enabling the SuperPrivacy setting. Blekko even lets you disable ads entirely if you’re logged in.

Ask.com – AskEraser

Ask.com offers an optional AskEraser feature that you can enable from its Settings page. When you enable this feature, Ask.com will set a single cookie in your browser – indicating that AskEraser is enabled – and delete all other Ask.com cookies. With AskEraser enabled, Ask.com won’t store your search history except in rare circumstances.

Ask.com does clarify that your search history will be stored if a critical error occurs (logging will resume until the problem is solved) or if law enforcement asks Ask.com to log your search activity.