this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
194 points (94.9% liked)
Privacy
31991 readers
688 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is not true. A 2-min look shows they are a Swiss-based, private search engine that does not serve ads (on mobile only apparently) and has its own web index, but also uses Bing’s web index.
Apparently, they do serve adds on desktop but they're based on anonymous search results and I presume having UBlock installed would resolve this.
Medium has a whole write-up here: https://medium.com/secure-words/try-swisscows-privacy-search-for-mobile-what-are-you-waiting-for-e616dd828328
I just got that from the website itself, unless I’m misreading it:
I believe you are correct. However, only on desktop. The Medium article specifically states they do not use ads on mobile so I believe ads are only on desktop. I typically use on mobile and have not seen any ads, nor on my non-mobile Firefox config when using SwissCows. Again, the ads are based on anonymous search results and in terms of relevant search results, at least in my testing, SwissCows far surpassed competitors.
are you working for swisscows?
lol. Nope, it was just the best search alternative to Google and DDG that I found worked for me. Thought I’d throw in my 2 cents. Isn’t that the point of this place?!