Having just written a brief post about the Oscobo search engine, which made a cameo in our Koko Analytics referrer logs, I now take a look at another search referral – search.earthlink.net. This is the second time in a few weeks that I found an ISP search wrapper in our logs. EarthLink uses Google – which one need not dig too deeply to discover since the EarthLink search bar reads “enhanced by Google.” Much like I did when I found CenturyLink in our logs, I will call upon people to not use search bars provided by their ISP’s website. ISPs can already collect enough information about ordinary customers. There is no reason to put searches straight into their websites. For those looking for a way to use Google without Google (and without paying), Startpage is a good place to start (also see my 2021 article on alternative search engines and wrappers).
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Jul 2022