CyberPrep: The Epic Solution For Preppers Seeking Online Privacy

It’s an Epic problem: If you are online, you can and will be tracked and traced by your (and other) governments.

Period.

There’s just no way to get around the fact that governments can and will have access to everything you do while online.

Why even bother?

So… why even bother with trying to be as private as possible while online? Because there’s a lot more people than just the government trying to record and use your information.

Google started out with the motto “Don’t be evil” but I think we all know how that’s gone. Google is the big dog in the fight, and they basically own the internet at the moment.

They are, however, most definitely not the only dog in there, and I want to talk about one of Google’s tiny (and relatively unknown to most) “competitors” as an example of what can be done to at least limit your privacy exposure while online.

The Epic project

There’s a project called “Epic” and among the things they do are a browser and a search engine, both centered around privacy and keeping you anonymous while working online.

First, let’s look at the browser.

Epic is a privacy-centered browser developed off of the Chromium project (i.e. it’s a cousin to Google’s Chrome under the hood and a distant relative to Apple’s Safari). The company is based in the US and India, and much of the customer base for epic is Indian.

With Epic, session data (such as cookies, history, and cache) are deleted automatically on exit.

The browser includes a proxy service that is automatically used when using a search engine such as’s Epic’s own Search Engine.

About Epic

Epic’s info page states they use “Eleven different ways from ID numbers to server-based services which can be used to know what you browsed.” The proxy service can be engaged at any time, to mask the user’s IP address: “Click the red open socket icon to turn on Epic’s built-in encrypted proxy. This hides your IP address (with a U.S -based IP) and encrypts all your data when you want to be very private.”

One feature that I REALLY like is that Epic has an integrated video downloader. Want a video you are watching downloaded so you can view it offline? Click a button and boom, it’s yours.

The usefulness of the search protection cannot be overstated for preppers: How many times, using Google, have you searched for some prepper item, then later open up your social media page to find it filled with nothing but ads for the items you had earlier searched for?

That’s corporate Big Brother watching you.

It also doesn’t happen with Epic.

Epic search is also one of my favorite tools. For those interested, here’s how Epic Search states that they work: “Here are some technical details on EpicSearch.in’s privacy. EpicSearch.in always routes your searches via https (PFS — much more secure than ordinary https) so that your searches are protected from your ISP and general surveillance.

Your searches are always routed through a built-in proxy so that your actual IP address never passes to any search server and thus we can’t know what you’re searching for. Since your query is encrypted, the proxy also doesn’t know what you’re searching for. Simply, your searches via EpicSearch.in in the Epic Privacy Browser are virtually untrackable.”

So… since we all know that in life TANSTAAFL (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch) how does Epic make money? At the moment, they don’t, and that throws into doubt if they will be around forever. There’s a HUGE amount of money to be made in data mining (what Google, Yahoo, etc) do, but if you don’t track what people are doing, it’s impossible to target ads to them (which limits revenues).

Here’s what the Epic team has to say about this: “We used to show search ads privately but Google insisted on tracking you, so we no longer have any search ads. Previously we sent a masked IP address so that Google could know your broad location but not enough information to know who you were or to track you.

Without giving us any specific reason, Google suspended the privacy-preserving search ads for us and we believe all such partners. We are currently working on alternative ways to continue to sustain both EpicSearch.in and our Epic Privacy Browser. We have spoken with many search engines and to our knowledge, EpicSearch.in is the only truly private search engine operating today. You can support us here: https://www.epicbrowser.com/donate.html”

I have sent them a few dollars for their efforts.

I use them and I suggest any privacy concerned prepper consider doing so as well.