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Category Archives: Search Engines

New safety and digital wellbeing options for younger people on YouTube and YouTube Kids

YouTube Official Blog: “Today, we’re announcing additional protections for people under 18 on YouTube and YouTube Kids. Younger people use YouTube every day to discover new interests, learn about the world, and connect with the world through online video. But it’s essential that as they do, they have the options and safeguards to create the… Continue Reading

DuckDuckGo’s new email privacy service forwards tracker-free messages

Bleeping Computer: “DuckDuckGo is rolling out an email privacy feature that strips incoming messages of trackers that can help profile you for better profiling and ad targeting. Users of the service get a free “@duck.com” email address that cleans messages of trackers and forwards them to your normal inbox. Currently in private beta, DuckDuckGo’s Email… Continue Reading

Google Maps now tells you how packed your train will be

ZDNet: “Google is using artificial intelligence to improve Google Maps’ ability to help commuters understand how busy the public transport on their journey will be. Google is trialling new carriage-level Maps ‘crowdedness prediction’ technology in New York and Sydney, where it will attempt to show the real-time state of each carriage.  The feature relies on… Continue Reading

Who did that website belong to?

Tools for Reporters: “You may already be familiar with WHOIS, the directory of website registrants. Under ICANN rules, you have to have contact info registered for a domain, and that contact info used to be public. Sadly, that changed in 2018 and much of the information is now redacted. But! A tool called WHOIS History… Continue Reading

Google knows where you are 24/7. Here’s how to make it stop

CNET:  “You turned off location history on your Google account, so now your Google apps can’t track you, right? Not exactly. While disabling that setting sounds like a one-and-done, some Google apps are still storing your location data. Merely opening the Google Maps app or using Google on any platform for a search logs your… Continue Reading

A New Tool Shows How Google Results Vary Around the World

Wired: “Google’s claim to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” has earned it an aura of objectivity. Its dominance in search, and the disappearance of most competitors, make its lists of links appear still more canonical. An experimental new interface for Google Search aims to remove that mantle of neutrality.… Continue Reading

How to Make Your Web Searches More Secure and Private

Wired: “When it comes to looking something up on the web, most of us default to Googling it—the search engine has become so dominant that it’s now a verb, in the same way that Photoshop is. But using Google for your searches comes with a privacy trade-off. Google’s business is, of course, based on advertising,… Continue Reading