How can I research and bookmark things online without impacting Google's AI?
I take a wide variety of writing assignments, often involving topics that don't truly interest me. Right now, my Google feed and ad settings think I'm obsessed with finding the right loveseat to go with my area rug. It's just a job; interior design is not my passion. Incognito mode is great, but I need to refer back to pages I've visited, so I keep temporary bookmarks and delete them when I'm done with my assignment. Google's AI doesn't seem to grasp the "temporary" part and I know I'll be seeing furniture ads for months now. Is there a better search engine, or should I just add clearing my history to my daily to do list?
Answers ( 2 )
Duck Duck Go is my default search engine for exactly this reason. No tracking, full stop.
Its not as good as google at every kind of search - I'll open up google if I need to look for a person's background beyond their linkedin profile, for example - but for 90% of the searches I do, DDG works fine.
Go to:
https://myactivity.google.com/?continue=https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
and log in to your google account.
Your security and privacy settings can help a great deal.
Google account > Data & personalization
allows you to adjust your activity controls. Activity controls lets you turn off:
• Web & App Activity
• Location History
• YouTube History
Google will still remember what it has already saved, so go to My Activity. You can laboriously delete each item using the three dots menu next to each entry, or just click on Delete Activity and then Delete by Date in order to wipe out large chunks.
With or without doing the above, you can set up a second Google account called ImaWorkin or SarahOnTheJob and do your research while logged into that. Many teachers have a second Google account they use at work for school email and search.
You can use a search engine like DuckDuckGo, I use their browser on my phone, which is a version of Chrome that has been modified to provide enhanced privacy.
You can also add the use of a VPN for complete online privacy. Searches, clicking on links, and any web activity is encrypted and sent to a VPN server first so that any entity on the web thinks the traffic is originating there. Even your internet service provider sees only encrypted traffic to and from that server.
Good VPN services wipe their server logs or keep no logs at all. Free VPN servers tend to keep connection logs, be overloaded, time limited, and a bit slow. Paid VPN services are fast and allow you to choose which location your traffic will seem to originate from.