Hide & Seek: Better privacy for your web searches 17+

Roopesh Chander Sivaraman

    • 3.8 • 4 Ratings
    • Free

Screenshots

Description

Hide & Seek lets you search in Google and Bing as an anonymous user, and simultaneously use their other services, like Gmail and Outlook as a logged in user. Hide & Seek does this by blocking cookies with a Safari content blocker extension.

‘Hide & Seek has nothing to do with “blocking ads”. It is simply about maintaining your privacy and anonymity while using Google and Bing for web search. In my testing, it works like a charm.’
- John Gruber, Daring Fireball

With both Google and Microsoft, if you’re logged into one service, you’re logged into all of them. For example, if you use Gmail on the browser, you become automatically logged in when you use Google search. This means that Google can (and does) associate your search query with your Google account. To counter this, you can use Hide & Seek to hide your identity in Google search, while still staying logged into Gmail.

Hide & Seek supports hiding your identity in:
• Google Web Search
• Google Images search
• Google Videos search
• Bing web search
• Bing images search
• Bing videos search
• Bing news

Before using Hide & Seek, you’ll have to decide which Google and Bing services you’d like to use logged out. Then, configure Hide & Seek to hide your identity in those services. After that, you can search as usual and your searches will be performed as a logged out user. You can simultaneously use other Google or Microsoft services (like Gmail or Outlook) in other tabs as a logged in user.

Some caveats:

• When using Google Images search on the iPad, when Hide & Seek is hiding your identity for that search, to visit the origin website of the image, you might have to use the ‘Open in New Tab’ option rather than tapping on a result directly.

• When you’d like to follow a Bing search result on an iPhone, when Hide & Seek is hiding your identity for that search, you might have to use the ‘Open in New Tab’ option rather than tapping on a result directly.

What’s New

Version 1.1

This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.

What's new in v1.1:

Previously, when you follow a Google search result by tapping on it directly (rather than using 'Open in New Tab'), that action was communicated to Google. This is now fixed and the action is no longer communicated to Google.

Ratings and Reviews

3.8 out of 5
4 Ratings

4 Ratings

TheBen12 ,

Amazing app, functional design

The app is great, and the design is pleasantly simplistic.

I took off a star because:

1) In Google (and Bing) search results, you must "open in new tab" -- otherwise, you will be tracked. I don't see any reason why the anti-tracking stuff shouldn't be able to work on the same tab.

2) The app is very limited, only working for Google and Bing, and even then not blocking cookies like most conventional ad-blockers do.

Sollicitudin Dapibus ,

No longer works

Hide & Seek stopped working a couple weeks ago. Hopefully it’ll see an update sometime soon, but I’m not holding my breath; last update was nearly a year ago.

App Privacy

The developer, Roopesh Chander Sivaraman, has not provided details about its privacy practices and handling of data to Apple. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

No Details Provided

The developer will be required to provide privacy details when they submit their next app update.

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