8 ms·

Vivaldi now includes Qwant, a privacy-focused search engine based in Europe

83 points by jonmccull 8y ago

Val_ 8y ago
A privacy-first search engine using Bing API, it's a joke.
- jonmccull 8y ago
  here's their privacy policy: https://about.qwant.com/legal/privacy/ https://about.qwant.com/legal/privacy/
- Tomte 8y ago
  Isn't that what DDG is using, as well?
- simias 8y ago
  As long as Bing doesn't get direct access to the metadata of the device making the query why does it matter? I assume they're not using the Bing API straight from the client browser, are they? They're basically proxy-ing Bing's results and add their own features on top of that. At least that's how I understand it.
  - lumberjack 8y ago
    Privacy is one but not the only problem with centralised web search. The other big problem is manipulation of search results. Of course it already happens for ads and filesharing and that is bad. But worst is when they do it for political reasons. Bing cannot tell who you are, but they can still promote their own agenda by tweaking the ranking of search results. Blog against MS? Send it to the 10th page or hide it entirely. Of course I use here a very innocuous example. You can imagine the power of tweaking search results. You can change the perception of reality, essentially.
  - amelius 8y ago
    Well, you're still sending information to Bing. For example, let's say you want to know if someone patented idea X. You can search for X on Qwant, but since they send the information to Bing, now Microsoft knows about X and they can scoop you. Just one example.
- dao- 8y ago
  Bing happens to have quite a good privacy policy, afaik.
novaRom 8y ago
From their privacy policy: "When you install Vivaldi browser, each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your computer. Vivaldi will send a message using HTTPS directly to our servers located in Iceland every 24 hours containing this ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message. We anonymize the IP address of Vivaldi users by removing the last octet of the IP address from your Vivaldi client then we store the resolved approximate location after using a local geoip lookup. The purpose of this collection is to determine the total number of active users and their geographical distribution." Is this information enough for them to uniquely identify and track each user?
- thecopy 8y ago
  >Is this information enough for them to uniquely identify and track each user? No. How could they identify who i am based on that information alone?
  - novaRom 8y ago
    1) each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your computer 2) every 24 hours it sends IP, ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message 3) then we store the resolved approximate location after using a local geoip lookup So, what they have for each ID: approximate location, CPU architecture, screen resolution. They can easily know places you visited. From Quant's privacy policy: "French law makes it mandatory to keep some connection data (e.g. user ID used, URL or position, nature of the operation, time…) for one year."
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      Add to that that we don’t know how the ID is generated and it can be system derrived.
    - thecopy 8y ago
      But how how they identify me?
onyva 8y ago
Stick with Mozilla Firefox. Don’t understand why people still believe a for-profit Corp will prioritize users rights. ... not to mention Brendan Eich’s divisive and controversial behavior befor he was forced out of Mozilla.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  More to the point, it's closed-source.
  - drchaos 8y ago
    Not open source per OSI criteria, however they claim the source is available and can be inspected: https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/ https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/
    - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
      Interesting. > This means that for all practical purposes the Vivaldi source code is available for audit. Acid test: can I build it myself and expect to see identical binaries to what they ship?
      - adrianN 8y ago
        Can you do that with Firefox? Reproducible builds are pretty hard.
        MaxBarraclough 8y ago
        Fair point. Of course, to a FOSS purist, it's still not good enough, as mere source-inspectibility isn't enough to qualify as OSI Open Source, or as FSF Free Software.
      - JdeBP 8y ago
        Actually the acid test in this instance is whether, source in hand, you can prove https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564964 wrong. (-:
scns 8y ago
Tried it for some time, got annoyed pretty fast by the tabloidheadlines they include into the page. Switched back to duckduckgo
- UncleSlacky 8y ago
  Did you try the "Lite" version? https://lite.qwant.com/ https://lite.qwant.com/
- plop_ 8y ago
  I agree, but they also provide a lite page (should be the default). https://lite.qwant.com/ https://lite.qwant.com/
TomK32 8y ago
I've been using Qwant for half a year now and like it a lot.
Raed667 8y ago
I have been using Qwant for a couple of months now, overall it gets to the point, but I find myself using "!g" quite often (which is also the case with duckduckgo ..
threatofrain 8y ago
How is Qwant advantageous over DuckDuckGo?
ailideex 8y ago
So on their landing page - they say "We are cookie-free" - but they put these values in localstorage: h_user: 9019..... user: {"isLogged":false,"error":false,"userSetting":{"searchRegionKey":"GB","searchMode":0,"safeSearch":1,"enableSuggest":true,"targetBlank":true,"showTrends":1,"showSmartNews":true,"showSmartVideos":true,"showSmartSocial":true,"selectTheme":0,"showFavicon":true,"continentKey":"WESTERNEUROPE","searchLanguageKey":"en","interfaceLanguageKey":"en_gb"},"version":28,"fieldsValidity":{}} So ... kinda bullshit.
- IlGrigiore 8y ago
  But those are just cookies related to the functionality and the personalization of the search page. I guess they could have written that they do not have any tracking cookies, but I guess the intent was to be clear to the average user: "we are cookie free", therefore we do not track you.
  - ChrisSD 8y ago
    Why don't they just say "we do not track you". That's accurate (hopefully) and clear to everybody.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - unpopular42 8y ago
    Except that the "h_user: 9019....." part looks like a unique user ID that you don't need for any personalization or functionality. Unique IDs are only useful for tracking.
    - mombul 8y ago
      Or stats?
drngdds 8y ago
Searx seems like the best option in this space, since you can host your own instance and avoid having to trust anyone (except the developers, assuming you didn't audit the code yourself).
- m3nu 8y ago
  Sadly Searx is just a scraper for Google and some others. So it doesn't give you any real freedom. Popular instances also get blocked now and then.
  - ealhad 8y ago
    https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/8fde0285-0139-4769-b989-63e064a2385b.png https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/8fde028... A few others indeed.
konart 8y ago
>Results are unavailable, please check your connection or try again okay

83 points by jonmccull 8y ago

Val_ 8y ago

A privacy-first search engine using Bing API, it's a joke.

jonmccull 8y ago
here's their privacy policy: https://about.qwant.com/legal/privacy/ https://about.qwant.com/legal/privacy/
Tomte 8y ago
Isn't that what DDG is using, as well?
simias 8y ago
As long as Bing doesn't get direct access to the metadata of the device making the query why does it matter? I assume they're not using the Bing API straight from the client browser, are they? They're basically proxy-ing Bing's results and add their own features on top of that. At least that's how I understand it.
- lumberjack 8y ago
  Privacy is one but not the only problem with centralised web search. The other big problem is manipulation of search results. Of course it already happens for ads and filesharing and that is bad. But worst is when they do it for political reasons. Bing cannot tell who you are, but they can still promote their own agenda by tweaking the ranking of search results. Blog against MS? Send it to the 10th page or hide it entirely. Of course I use here a very innocuous example. You can imagine the power of tweaking search results. You can change the perception of reality, essentially.
- amelius 8y ago
  Well, you're still sending information to Bing. For example, let's say you want to know if someone patented idea X. You can search for X on Qwant, but since they send the information to Bing, now Microsoft knows about X and they can scoop you. Just one example.
dao- 8y ago
Bing happens to have quite a good privacy policy, afaik.

novaRom 8y ago

From their privacy policy: "When you install Vivaldi browser, each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your computer. Vivaldi will send a message using HTTPS directly to our servers located in Iceland every 24 hours containing this ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message. We anonymize the IP address of Vivaldi users by removing the last octet of the IP address from your Vivaldi client then we store the resolved approximate location after using a local geoip lookup. The purpose of this collection is to determine the total number of active users and their geographical distribution." Is this information enough for them to uniquely identify and track each user?

thecopy 8y ago
>Is this information enough for them to uniquely identify and track each user? No. How could they identify who i am based on that information alone?
- novaRom 8y ago
  1) each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your computer 2) every 24 hours it sends IP, ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message 3) then we store the resolved approximate location after using a local geoip lookup So, what they have for each ID: approximate location, CPU architecture, screen resolution. They can easily know places you visited. From Quant's privacy policy: "French law makes it mandatory to keep some connection data (e.g. user ID used, URL or position, nature of the operation, time…) for one year."
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    Add to that that we don’t know how the ID is generated and it can be system derrived.
  - thecopy 8y ago
    But how how they identify me?

onyva 8y ago

Stick with Mozilla Firefox. Don’t understand why people still believe a for-profit Corp will prioritize users rights. ... not to mention Brendan Eich’s divisive and controversial behavior befor he was forced out of Mozilla.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago
More to the point, it's closed-source.
- drchaos 8y ago
  Not open source per OSI criteria, however they claim the source is available and can be inspected: https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/ https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/
  - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
    Interesting. > This means that for all practical purposes the Vivaldi source code is available for audit. Acid test: can I build it myself and expect to see identical binaries to what they ship?
    - adrianN 8y ago
      Can you do that with Firefox? Reproducible builds are pretty hard.
      - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
        Fair point. Of course, to a FOSS purist, it's still not good enough, as mere source-inspectibility isn't enough to qualify as OSI Open Source, or as FSF Free Software.
    - JdeBP 8y ago
      Actually the acid test in this instance is whether, source in hand, you can prove https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564964 wrong. (-:

scns 8y ago

Tried it for some time, got annoyed pretty fast by the tabloidheadlines they include into the page. Switched back to duckduckgo

UncleSlacky 8y ago
Did you try the "Lite" version? https://lite.qwant.com/ https://lite.qwant.com/
plop_ 8y ago
I agree, but they also provide a lite page (should be the default). https://lite.qwant.com/ https://lite.qwant.com/

TomK32 8y ago

I've been using Qwant for half a year now and like it a lot.

Raed667 8y ago

I have been using Qwant for a couple of months now, overall it gets to the point, but I find myself using "!g" quite often (which is also the case with duckduckgo ..

threatofrain 8y ago

How is Qwant advantageous over DuckDuckGo?

ailideex 8y ago

So on their landing page - they say "We are cookie-free" - but they put these values in localstorage: h_user: 9019..... user: {"isLogged":false,"error":false,"userSetting":{"searchRegionKey":"GB","searchMode":0,"safeSearch":1,"enableSuggest":true,"targetBlank":true,"showTrends":1,"showSmartNews":true,"showSmartVideos":true,"showSmartSocial":true,"selectTheme":0,"showFavicon":true,"continentKey":"WESTERNEUROPE","searchLanguageKey":"en","interfaceLanguageKey":"en_gb"},"version":28,"fieldsValidity":{}} So ... kinda bullshit.

IlGrigiore 8y ago
But those are just cookies related to the functionality and the personalization of the search page. I guess they could have written that they do not have any tracking cookies, but I guess the intent was to be clear to the average user: "we are cookie free", therefore we do not track you.
- ChrisSD 8y ago
  Why don't they just say "we do not track you". That's accurate (hopefully) and clear to everybody.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- unpopular42 8y ago
  Except that the "h_user: 9019....." part looks like a unique user ID that you don't need for any personalization or functionality. Unique IDs are only useful for tracking.
  - mombul 8y ago
    Or stats?

drngdds 8y ago

Searx seems like the best option in this space, since you can host your own instance and avoid having to trust anyone (except the developers, assuming you didn't audit the code yourself).

m3nu 8y ago
Sadly Searx is just a scraper for Google and some others. So it doesn't give you any real freedom. Popular instances also get blocked now and then.
- ealhad 8y ago
  https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/8fde0285-0139-4769-b989-63e064a2385b.png https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/8fde028... A few others indeed.

konart 8y ago

>Results are unavailable, please check your connection or try again okay