Post-PRISM, Google Confirms Quietly Moving To Make All Searches Secure, Except For Ad Clicks

[Recursion]

http://searchengineland.com/post-prism-google-secure-searches-172487

Of course, if people had simply gotten in the habit of typing "https" 15 years ago, none of this would be an issue anyways...

In the past month, Google quietly made a change aimed at encrypting all search activity — except for clicks on ads. Google says this has been done to provide “extra protection” for searchers, and the company may be aiming to block NSA spying activity. Possibly, it’s a move to increase ad sales. Or both. Welcome to the confusing world of Google secure search.

In October 2011, Google began encrypting searches for anyone who was logged into Google. The reason given was privacy. Google said it wanted to block anyone who might potentially be eavesdropping on a string of searches made by an individual and also prevent the actual search terms themselves from being seen by publishers, as some of them might be too “private” to reveal.

Now, Google has flipped on encryption for people who aren’t even signed-in. When asked about this last week, Google confirmed the shift, saying:

We added SSL encryption for our signed-in search users in 2011, as well as searches from the Chrome omnibox earlier this year. We’re now working to bring this extra protection to more users who are not signed in.

The author continues to some Q&A with a Google rep.

[nebenaube]

1. meaningless lip service n/t

[Recursion]

2. How do you figure?

It's what a lot of us have been calling for for years, since people apparently can't be bothered to use SSL themselves.

[nebenaube]

3. well as it has been brought to our attention

1 Merely using encryption makes the transmission more interesting.
2 SSL & VPN have both been shown to be compromised by NSA.
3 NSA would just get it from google anyway if they want it.

Now, this will reduce what a lay person can sniff from the packets. That is, unless they are determined.

[Recursion]

4. "SSL" and "VPN" aren't things

Those are descriptions of classes of technologies, neither of which have been "compromised"

[nebenaube]

5. yeah, right

just easily decrypted due to design flaws.

[Recursion]

6. Did you know that in both clients can demand specific ciphers?

I set all my TLS clients to require blowfish or twofish. It only occasionally causes problems.

[BelgianMadCow]

7. Simple answer: Ixquick.com

it became my homepage years ago instead of Google and I haven't gone back.

You have a right to privacy.
Your search data should never fall into the wrong hands.
The only real solution is quickly deleting your data or not storing them to begin with.
Since January 2009 we do not record our users' IP addresses anymore.
Your personal data are not shared with any third party.
We are the first and only search engine to do so.
Since then we have added many other features that protect your privacy.

http://www.ixquick.com

[Recursion]

8. +1

My truly secure OpenBSD box has never at any point accessed Google.