3 ms·

All major search engines support https, which will become the norm eventually and not empower Google (or another redirector) to sniff packets.

• belorn 14y ago
  https won't prevent the whole redirect request to be logged and stored in an decrypted format. Google will take a comeplete search string (search/#search=things+I+want+to+buy), and redirect that . the search parameters are perfectly visible for the redirect server.
  • portmanteaufu 14y ago
    This defies my understanding of HTTPS. I thought that in an https request, an encrypted connection would be made to the host first and the request itself (including the query string) would be transmitted as an encrypted stream. Could someone please enlighten me?
    • kbenson 14y ago
      In this case, Google would operate the endpoint a http://search http://search. They may redirect or proxy to your registered preference for a search engine, but they have still answered the original request. So if you used an automatic search tool (like the search box built into your browser) that used that address, Google would see http://search?q=question http://search?q=question as the request and THEN have to decide what actions to take (redirect, proxy, etc). Users that just went to http://search http://search and THEN entered their question would not show Google their queries, if redirected to their engine of choice, but if Google just proxied their search engine choice, they would still see everything.