jobleau

I've been playing with ixquick for a while now and I'm very satisfied with it.

It is not a standard search engine like Google or Bing. Rather, it is a meta-search engine. The difference is that a meta-search engine returns results from many other standard search engines. The advantage of a meta-search engine is you get the aggregated best results from a bunch of engines. However, usually, there is a performance penalty using a meta-search engine as it queries and waits for the other engines instead of searching it's own databases. But surprisingly enough, this is not the case with ixquick. It feels as fast and responsive as Google or any other standard search engine.

One other thing I like from ixquick is that they offer a SSL option for searching. SSL, while not the panacea to all privacy issues, sure is a nice feature. For those who don't know, SSL is a secure encrypted transmission protocol encapsulated within the standard HTML protocol used for transmitting web pages. That little padlock icon you get when you go to your banking site or when buying something online, that is SSL protecting your data. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. And a layer it is indeed, a supplemental layer protecting you. Of course, like any other security measures, there are ways to circumvent SSL. But any additional security layer can only be good. I strongly suggest you use that feature. It won't slow you down and will add to your privacy since the data is encrypted. This way, no one can know what your searching for and the results you get and use.

Just for these 2 reasons, it would be worth switching to ixquick. But there is another one. They claim that they do not record your IP address (see my previous post for more info about that) and that they do not use cookies. The second claim is true. I verified it personally. Unfortunately, I have no way to verify the first. But I'm inclined to believe it is true. And this comes down as the utmost privacy you can get on the net. So a GREAT feature it is. Just remember though, as soon as you click one of the results, you're out of SSL and that site you're now visiting will record and track you IP like everywhere else. The only privacy you get is on the search itself.

As Tinydick4u said, I think it's pretty secure and ixquick is now my default search engine.

Give it a shot: https://us2.ixquick.com/. This is the SSL encrypted version.

If you want to add it to your browsers, got there with each of your browsers: ixquick browser plugin

@hoverfly: thanks for the excellent reference.