This post[1] marks the third in a series of posts covering the customization of privacy settings in Mozilla Firefox. In previous posts we looked at some modifications using the about:config interface and we suggested the use of some privacy-enhancing add-ons for your Firefox. In this post, we will suggest some changes of your search engines to further increase your privacy by reducing your digital footprint.

Why you should care about search engines

Search engines (read Google) are the central hub for the overwhelming majority of internet users and as such they know a frightening lot about you. DuckDuckGo, a Google competitor that prides itself to value the privacy of its users, has recently created an illustrated guide why user-tracking by search engines is problematic.

Moreover—because of their central position in our online lives—search engines determine what we see on the internet. Eli Pariser has given an excellent presentation (see video below) about the effects of what he calls “filter bubbles”.

If you prefer illustrated guides, you might want to have a look at DuckDuckGo’s “Escape your search engine Filter Bubble!”

How to reduce your digital footprint

At WebDevelopmentAid we follow two basic principles to reduce our digital footprint:

Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Search where you want to find.

The first principle demands a diversification of your searches. Instead of using only Google’s—admittedly—supreme search engine one should also use other services: Bing has an excellent video search, for basic searches you might consider DuckDuckGo, Microsoft Academic Search has almost as many scholarly articles as Google Scholar, for highly personal matters (e.g. for health issues) you might consider privacy-respecting alternatives like DuckDuckGo, Ixquick, or Startpage.

The second principle demands that you search in the right places. If you already know where to get your results, then there is no need to tell Google (or whatever search engine you use) about it. Let us illustrate this approach with the following example: Assuming you are interested in Wikipedia’s definition of web design there is no need to google for web design wikipedia; you should rather go to Wikipedia, click in the search field, type web design, hit Enter, and choose the result you are interested in.

Thanks to the Firefox search bar and the search engine keyword function, observing these principles is easier than you might expect. In the following, we describe how you manage your search engines and how you can install search engines that help you to find where you want to find.

Managing your search engines

By default, Firefox includes Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon.com, eBay, Twitter and Wikipedia (en).

Through the Search Engines Manager, you can download and install additional search engines for Firefox. Courtesy of Firefox Help here is an overview to get you started:

To open the Search Engines Manager, click the down arrow next to the search engine icon and select Manage Search Engines. To add a search engine, click Get more search engines…. The Mozilla Add-ons Search Tools page is displayed. To add one of the displayed search engines, click the Add to Firefox button. The Add Search Engine dialog is displayed.

To install search engines that are not listed on Mozilla’s Add-ons Search Tool page there is the Mycroft Project which gives you access to hundreds of different search engines all in one place.

To conveniently create tailor-made search engines we recommend the search plugin generator provided by searchplugins.net. Or you could download and install a selection of search engine plugins we use at WebDevelopmentAid from our GitHub repository.

Using keywords to search from the address bar

Keywords are an easy way to search specific websites directly from the address bar (“location bar” in Firefox parlance) instead of using the search bar. For instance, you could assign a keyword such as wiki to the Wikipedia search engine, then type wiki web design in order to search Wikipedia for web design.

To assign keywords to your search engine plugins, follow the following four steps:

Click the search engine icon and select Manage Search Engines…, to open the Search Engines Manager. In the Search Engines Manager, select the search engine you would like to assign a keyword to. Click Edit Keyword…. In the Edit Keyword window, type the keyword you would like to use for that search engine, and click OK.

The Search Engines list has a “keyword” column, where you can see the keyword for each search engine in the list.

Final remarks

Make no mistake, observing these principles, even when combined with our recommended about:config settings and privacy-enhancing add-ons, will not make your browsing anonymous—far from it. However, using alternative search engines will help to considerably minimize your search engine provider’s ability to gather data in order to build a comprehensive profile of yourself.

As always, we would like to get your feedback on this how-to and we would like to encourage you to let us know if you have any questions or remarks.

[1] ↑ This post was expanded and last updated on January 28, 2014.