IT Security Stack Exchange
IT Security Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [search-engines]

28 questions
107
votes
3 answers

How does DuckDuckGo know my native language even though I am using a VPN in a country with a different language?

I recently started using a VPN and I've felt more comfortable browsing the Internet. My VPN allows me to select another country through which my traffic is routed to make it appear I'm located in that particular country. "What's my IP" and similar…
S. Rotos
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40
votes
4 answers

What benefits are there to blocking most search engines?

While on a client's site using the corporate network, I see that only a few search engines are allowed. Google and Bing, possibly others; while my fav DuckDuckGo is blocked, and a few others that I've tried are also blocked. The search engines are…
YetAnotherRandomUser
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11
votes
1 answer

Why can't search engines reach the dark web?

Why can't search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing reach dark web and archive its content to display it in their results?
Petr
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7
votes
1 answer

What's the difference between using duckduckgo with !google bangs and using google directly?

Is there any security advantage in searching on duckduckgo using !google? Or is it effectively the same as searching directly on google?
borizzzzz
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5
votes
1 answer

Do search engines verify HTTPS certificates, and if so, against which CAs?

Just out of curiosity, I'm wondering whether search engines attempt to validate certificates and what is their trust store. Do they accept everything regardless of certificate's trust/validity or do they only take into account pages fetched over a…
André Borie
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4
votes
2 answers

Pirate Bay Search Appearing in Chrome

While googling some errors today I noticed I had the option to use the pirate bay search Now I saw a similar question posted here How did piratebay.se search engine get in Chrome as an “other search engine” But my problem is different. It only…
RyanIG
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4
votes
1 answer

Odd search engine entries

A customer found about a dozen valid URLs pointing to existing customer related documents at Yahoo. These URLs were not public and certainly not searchable at the customer's site. The documents have hard to guess names like…
countermode
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3
votes
3 answers

Determine what a company is googling

Let's say that a fictional company, AwSemCo, discovers that a published vulnerability "CVE0day" affects their systems and they immediately start investigating it. They go to the web looking for a solution, what to look for forensically if they've…
Jim M
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3
votes
1 answer

How to minimise personalised result skewing in search engines?

Quite often I see comments on this SE network in the form of: Given that this question is now the top Google hit… But sometimes that was a statement I couldn't confirm to be true. Recently I saw the exact thing happening to me: Googled a phrase,…
LаngLаngС
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3
votes
1 answer

Faked XSS in Search Bar

I was poking around one of Google's lesser known programs, Build with Chrome, when I noticed something pretty funny with their search bar. When you type in the standard XSS payload , the notification pops up as if the site…
B00TK1D
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2
votes
0 answers

Can the Google Console html verification file be used maliciously, when exposed?

I was wondering, if the special html verification file can be used by "hackers". This file contains some unique string that is linked to a user's Google Console account. Google asks the user not to erase it after the initial verification, or else…
i.brod
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2
votes
1 answer

Private generated and encrypted links show up in Yahoo search, but not Google

A customer found a couple of generated links pointing to private data on their website. After looking at the links and searching a specific part of the URL on Yahoo, I found dozens of other private links available, from all our other clients (all…
charlotmartine
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1
vote
2 answers

How does Google search extract text from pages behind a paywall?

For a recent example, type in to Google (with quotes) "Reggie Kray as a character witness" and your first result should be this article from The Times. Even with all of my best JavaScript tricks, I can only read up to the start of the fourth…
J. Mini
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1
vote
1 answer

How does Medium know my Google searches?

I searched for "Adele's weight loss" today and up popped the article "How to support your fat friends?" in my news feed on Medium. I literally have read nothing about fat people on Medium and it just popped up today.
most venerable sir
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1
vote
1 answer

Typed my password on Google search box by mistake. What happens now?

By mistake, I copied and pasted a password into Google Chrome search box on my personal computer, a Mac computer. However, I did not press enter or click search button/magnifying glass. Is my password compromised, should I change it. Thank you.
Supertech
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