Google vs VPNs: What's been your experience?

Privacy Questions
1

Like many of you, I’ve been moving away from Google as much as possible over the years.

Like many of you, I still have to engage with Google sometimes.

When it comes to trying to use Google through a VPN, this has been my experience:

  1. You can usually use search without too much difficulty after completing a CAPTCHA.
  2. Creating new accounts is a crippling, almost impossible experience. Even as a paying customer, your account will most likely be suspended.
  3. Logging into aged accounts doesn’t appear to cause any flags, but I’m sure there’s always a risk.

What has been your experience and do you have any tips?

2

I don’t directly use Google search but I never run into issues using Mullvad Leta as a proxy. Or DuckDuckGo for Bing.

I haven’t run into many issues creating accounts. I am a bit confused by the question but I am assuming you mean Google accounts. The only slight annoyance is sometimes I might have to spend a few cents purchasing a number from SMS pool for verification.

I can’t speak to that. I have never run into issues that would make me think its much of a risk.

My experience has been relatively smooth. It’s hard to give you tips as I am not sure what provider you use. Maybe try a different server and see if that helps?

3

Yeah, same here. I never experienced any major issues. Even Google has stopped giving me CAPTCHA for search when I do sometimes need to use it.

The sites that have caused major problems can be counted on one hand and I seldom visit those so it’s not a problem practically speaking.

4

I may have given them wrong answers, because of course how much wheel outside the main grid is “no longer part of the motorcycle”. This stupid Ship of Theseus problem that even Google trips on its own.

I think my record was 15 before I give up, further fueling my hatred for Google and its ecosystem. Go kill Google Search, I dare you, I double dare you mthfker.

5

Here is my experience:

  1. Search is usually doable, albeit with some friction. You’ll often hit a CAPTCHA wall, not smooth but tolerable.
  2. Creating new Google accounts while on a VPN? Borderline impossible. Even as a paying customer, the system is quick to detect “unusual behavior” and accounts get suspended almost instantly. It’s like the system assumes you’re not a bot farm until proven otherwise. And proving otherwise isn’t really an option.
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6

Luckily there are many great alternatives now so it isn’t vital to use anything Google related most of the time, but I still wanted to see to what degree I could achieve an “anonymous” Google account. I might try creating an account from some random library’s internet, let it age, and then see if I can later use it from a VPN without getting flagged.

7

From my experience a google account without attached gmail address as the account owner aren’t being bombarded with request for phone number and recovery email. Not many people have a google account without gmail attached though, and not many even realised its a thing.

Google search without logged in google account is unusable with vpn/tor though, an endless captcha hell. Same with startpage that 100% use google result. Brave search that partially used google results are also have now introduced captcha for vpn users. I’ve been google search free since 4-5 years due to the captcha.

8

At home, I host my own search using Searxng, which utilizes Google (and others) but remains anonymous and obviously doesn’t store any search history:

searxng.org

SearXNG providers maintain public-facing instances here: https://searx.space

9

Will you be able to host it for all to use? Or is it only for you and want to keep it that way? I didn’t know you could host it acting it/making it a front end for Google and others. I know little about searxng in general. Need to learn more.

1 Like
10

I thought Startpage stopped using Google as a result some time ago?

11

I only host it internally, don’t need it outside of my home. I generally use Google while at work/on work hardware, but anytime I’m at home on my own machines I prefer to use my own private search.

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13

When DDG doesn’t work for me I usually use mullvad leta to access google results. It proxies google and brave search and now works even when you’re not connected to their VPN.

As far as other google sites are concerned, youtube is the most complicated. Luckily I never really liked youtube and I’m not addicted so I only really need it mostly for embedded videos or random links as it’s frankly unavoidable. For this, I found a mullvad server that mostly works for me and I have it setup to use that specific server for the relevant domains - youtube.com / youtube-nocookie.com / googlevideo.com via their socks5 proxy feature. You can use split tunneling socks5 easily with their firefox extension or browser or something like foxyproxy extension on chrome based browsers.

Oh and I would never think to login to any google site or android if it can be helped… and if i cared that much about subscriptions or channels, I would just use some kind of linux alternative for newpipe or smartube app that (without doing any research) I’m sure must exist. At that stage I don’t care if youtube is the only website that gets my real IP.

14

I just found out that on mobile, google search play well with either opera or opera mini browser. Startpage too. They probably whitelisted opera ip since opera got built-in proxy. No endless looping captcha there.