DuckDuckGo: don't get your Google searches passed around

There's an old saying: if you're not paying for an online service, then YOU are the product being sold. In the case of Google, their primary revenue stream is from selling ads. Companies buy tracking information about everyone who does Google searches, which includes geo-code information that is surprisingly easy to track back to you. If you'd like to see how this is done, take a look here: http://donttrack.us/

If you use Gmail, you're doubley-tracked. Basically any service from Google that you are signed in to that ultimately ties to a Gmail account, like Google+, YouTube, Blogger, will directly tie your search information directly to your email account.

You can avoid this with DuckDuckGo. It's a search engine that delivers high quality results, can easily search in to web sites like Amazon or Ebay, and doesn't store information that can be tracked back to you. Google is routinely served with subpoenas for user information which they must comply with, DuckDuckGo doesn't save anything that can be surrendered to a subpoena. And it does smarter results: let's say you're searching for Mike Ditka, the first returned result will be a Wikipedia summary that might answer your question without clicking further.

And in Firefox and Chrome, I don't know about Safari yet (and if you're using Internet Explorer: why?), you can easily make it your default search engine.

https://duckduckgo.com/

Yes, Sharia Law dictates how the YMCA operates

"Sharia law is now changing everything."
—Fox News anchor Heather Nauert, on a St. Paul YMCA swimming class for five-to-fifteen-year-old Somali-American girls, during which men are not allowed in the pool area

Clearly Sharia Law infiltrated the USA hundreds of years ago, heck, it probably infiltrated England because of their boarding schools. I don't see any other reasonable explanation, except to maybe keeping the girls from being preyed upon by sleazy men, or perhaps to avoid language issues, or to save them embarrassment if they are beginning swimmers, or if there's a history of men being disruptive to the class.