Thanks for all your helpful comments. I had not heard of duckduckgo before and I will certainly give it a try. I used to think I was reasonably tech-savvy, but I clearly had no idea of how invasive Google has become. A salutary lesson.
Mixture - my moniker originally referred to concern about the increasing use of automation and the corresponding decrease in basic flying skills that has become self-evident in commercial civil aviation over the last several years and how a flying career is now very different to what is was back in my day. However - maybe it also now can refer to Google?