The internet is a great place to find content, entertainment and information. It also contains dangers such as hackers, spammers, viruses and objectionable material.
The internet is dangerous enough for adults, but it can be even more damaging for children who can be exposed to pornography or other graphic content. How do parents protect themselves and their children from this kind of content?
Swisscows search engine is a family friend search engine that respects your privacy. Learn all about it below.
Table of Contents
Internet Privacy
Google’s search engine tracks your every move. This benefits Google and it’s business partners more than it benefits you. Most people feel that they don’t have any control of how their personal data is used, according to this Internet Privacy poll by Pew Research.
Google doesn’t only track your search queries but also what links you click on. If you use Chrome as your browser Google tracks everything you do on the internet.
This allows Google to build a complete history of you: everything you like, your beliefs, politics, medical issues – everything.
Dangers of the internet
The internet can be a dangerous place if you don’t know how to protect yourself. This is especially the case for children.
Inappropriate Content
Children as young as 8 or 9 frequently encounter content online that is inappropriate (source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/real-healing/201208/overexposed-and-under-prepared-the-effects-early-exposure-sexual-content).
Viewing pornographic material can have long lasting effects on children, such as:
- Early sex
- High risk sex
- Sexual violence
Predators
The internet is full of people who will prey upon children. Just as we tell children to be wary of strangers in real life the same is true online.
Damaged reputations
Sending messages or photos online can damage your reputation for years to come. Once something is online, it’s online forever.
People, and businesses, use the internet to research what people have done previously. It could affect your chances of getting a job. You could even be blackmailed if you uploaded content that is embarrassing or personal.
Family Friendly Search Engine
Swisscows places great importance on family-friendly internet content.
This is what is important to Swisscows:
- Moral values
- Hates violence and pornography
- Promotion of digital media education
Children need to be protected from the dangers of the internet. It’s hard to do that as a parent, we often don’t know enough about technology to know how to stop our children from being exposed to dangerous content.
School teachers also do not teach digital media skills to help children use the internet safely.
Swisscows have produced a free brochure on Digital Media Training to help parents learn how to keep their children safe when using the internet. You can download here: https://swisscows.com/docs/Medienerziehung_2020_06_EN.pdf
Safe image searches
Swisscows does not index or display pornographic content. They believe children should be able to use the internet safely without being exposed to explicit images.
Setting your browser to use Swisscows as it’s default search engine will ensure you will not be exposed to pornographic links or images.
How does Swisscows earn money?
Swisscows serves ads from Bing. Your search query is transmitted to Bing which then delivers ads based on that query.
Since Swisscows doesn’t collect personal data from you it can’t transmit any personal data to Bing. Each ad click results in a share of the advertising revenue.
How to switch to Swisscows from another search engine?
Swisscows has a page showing you how to install Swisscows as your default search engine on most popular browsers.
Here is the link: https://swisscows.com/en/install-swisscows#default-search
Make Swisscows your default search engine in the Firefox browser
Here is the firefox plugin to make Swisscows your default search engine: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/swisscows-search/
Make Swisscows your default search engine in Google Chrome
You can use a Chrome extension to make Swisscows your default search engine. Here is the link to the extension:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/swisscows/ibimaeimnogcdnjmmlpodbhhbejnpaij?hl=en
From the screenshot above you can see I allow the extension to work in Incognito mode, otherwise it will default back to using Google. This option is off by default so do remember to enable it for complete privacy protection.
How do I know data isn’t stored?
Swisscows technology is built in a way that prevents storage of data.
- No search history
- No search log files
- No data stored
- Delivery of ads not based on collected data
“Swisscows has no interest in your data. We do not store any data, we do not build up any search history, and we guarantee absolute anonymity.”
Source: https://swisscows.com/
Swisscows takes your data privacy seriously. Here are the steps they take to keep your searches anonymous.
- have their own servers and do not work with a cloud or third party
- have their data centre in the Swiss Alps
- positioned everything geographically outside of EU and US
With Swisscows your searches are 100% anonymous.
How to follow Swisscows on social media
Keep up to date with Swisscows by following them on your favourite social media platform:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swisscows
Twitter: https://twitter.com/swisscows_ch
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/organization-guest/company/swisscows
Final Thoughts
Dissatisfaction with Google is growing over the increasing level of surveillance and tracking of all user activities. Google’s business is almost entirely based on advertising so this will not stop and will likely increase over time.
Google search results are bloated with increasing numbers of widgets that serve to keep people on Google, rather than providing the most relevant links.
If you are fed up with Google and looking for an alternative search engine then why not try Swisscows?
It’s a great choice if you are looking for a family friendly search engine that protects you from pornography and other objectionable content.
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