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DuckDuckGo is only private if you trust their word. Over the years they continue to refuse access for a trusted third-party auditor to review their infrastruct

DuckDuckGo is only private if you trust their word. Over the years they continue to refuse access for a trusted third-party auditor to review their infrastructure and validate (or not) their claims of privacy. The preference of Android to place DDG in Europe (31 out of 31 countries) is strange when considering privacy as argument. Then is placed this "info.com" as second option on all European countries (31 out of 31 countries) which is virtually unheard about, and again a US-based service which again raises eyebrows on privacy. Europe-wide has a search engine that deserves our preference, and that is http://qwant.com http://qwant.com Precisely because it is built and hosted in Europe. Yet, it is displayed as the last option and only as an option for 8 out of 31 european countries. Very strange. Talking from Germany, the preference here would be http://ecosia.com http://ecosia.com

johnofthesea 7y ago
as far as I know https://swisscows.com https://swisscows.com is also hosted in Europe
Accacin 7y ago
Not doubting you, but do you have any sources for your claims? I will use Qwant in the future but at the minute it's not suitable (IMO) for daily usage. Ecosia seems like a great idea, but these kind of 'Search and earn' sites have always seemed like a scam to me and I can't find any reason to trust Ecosia over DDG.
- nunobrito 7y ago
  I'm a software auditor in Europe (per times consulting the European commission itself), mostly for open source licenses but also for cybersec and privacy matters. This topic with DDG is recurring since years. You cannot verify the infrastructure, it is not hosted on EU-bounded servers and they have been asked for cooperation. Nothing moved as far I follow. With Ecosia you are right. The point is that Ecosia accountable to European Law in case of scam. You can trust germans to close down the service if ever deemed to be a scam.
  - DavideNL 7y ago
    What do you think about Startpage? And, which European search engine would you recommend?
    - jakub_g 7y ago
      Startpage was acquired by an adtech company a few months ago https://www.ghacks.net/2019/11/16/startpage-search-owner-changes-raise-serious-questions/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/11/16/startpage-search-owner-cha...
      - DavideNL 7y ago
        Yes i'm aware of that, but they were not 'acquired'... although it's definitely not a good development, i'd argue Startpage is still better (privacy wise) than for example Google.
        krageon 7y ago
        > i'd argue Startpage is still better Why would you argue this? Adtech companies are one of the big sources of problems with privacy online.
    - nunobrito 7y ago
      That one was verified and passed. While sharing coffee with a colleague years ago, he argued that something smelled odd about them. In is opinion was a front for the CIA or some other sponsored group that harvests data. Mind you that he provided no facts to support this claim. I tried to inform myself as much as possible about them, about their technology and people working there. Very scarce info exists. Try it by yourself, then let me know if you do manage to find more info about them. My only recommendation at the moment is qwant on the european side. Not because of privacy, but mostly to enable diversity of choice on the continent. In case of war or embargo, consequences here would be devastating on the tech-side.
  - m00dy 7y ago
    What would be the practices for infrastructure review ?
- cren 7y ago
  I agree about Qwant being unsuitable for daily usage. I had to stop using it after entering a search query via the omnibar in Firefox would sometimes fail, apparently at random, and redirect me to Qwant's homepage instead of the search results.
  - nunobrito 7y ago
    Wouldn't know. It works OK for me and I use it on daily basis across several devices.
- seiko988 7y ago
  I've had very good results with cliqz as far as European search engines go. https://beta.cliqz.com/ https://beta.cliqz.com/
  - Zhyl 7y ago
    I find cliqz is very good at natural language queries, but doesn't have the index size a lot of the time. You either end up with 10 results that are exactly what you were searching for or nothing.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
rambojazz 7y ago
> DuckDuckGo is only private if you trust their word. This a million times. For the same reasons why I don't trust proprietary (closed source) crypto software.
raverbashing 7y ago
> to refuse access for a trusted third-party auditor to review their infrastructure and validate (or not) their claims of privacy. Which company would accept (and pay for that) given there's no legal requirement for it? Here's a better test: DDG sets exactly one cookie in my browser, with a short value (not unique enough to track anything). Makes me trust them more than some BS popup saying "we care about your privacy" I don't see why I wouldn't trust DDG in relation to their alternatives
- nunobrito 7y ago
  > Which company would accept (and pay for that) given there's no legal requirement for it? Maybe relevant for a company whose business model is built around the promise of preserving end-user privacy? > I don't see why Data storage and network communication occurring inside the European space alone, rather than sending packets from European users to elsewhere unknown. Being fully accountable to European law, with base offices and employees in Europe so they are subject to the same data-protection rules as other locally-based companies. When looking at other alternatives such as Ecosia, Qwant: they do offer this and yet are seldom presented as a search engine option by Android. Strange.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - raverbashing 7y ago
    > When looking at other alternatives such as Ecosia, Qwant W.r.t. them I agree, but have they been subject to a 3rd party audit (honest question, I'm not familiar with them)? I'm not saying we should trust DDG (or any search engine) 100% without proof, but the best way of keeping your privacy is not collecting data and it seems DDG is doing that.
    - Fnoord 7y ago
      We don't know what they are collecting. They could just as well be an NSA front and easily profile based on IP searches. In the end, American companies bend to US law. That is why Europeans should desire a European alternative in the first place. The workaround is using Tor.
Freegile 7y ago
Are qwant and ecosia doing their own indexing of the web? As far as I know, beta.cliqz.com is trying to do that. Starting off with a kind of crowd sourced Google scraping. Will be intersting how it evolves.
_Codemonkeyism 7y ago
"The preference of Android to place DDG in Europe (31 out of 31 countries) is strange when considering privacy as argument." DDG Marketing.
crocodiletears 7y ago
Hadn't heard of Qwant. Looks like they do their own indexing, which is good to see. Definitely an engine to keep an eye on. Ecosia is just repackaged Bing, ostensibly with a second filter/ranking pass over Bing's results iirc. Is there much difference between the two from an end-user perspective, beyond the ecology gimmick?
- nunobrito 7y ago
  Ecosia is a small Berlin startup. They are profitable and happy to just relay the results from other search engines. Qwant is far bigger. Aims to be a complete replacement for Google in Europe with their own datasets. They have difficulties in funding and their survival is mostly depending on public funding and eventually being accepted as default choice for companies across Europe. From that perspective, it makes a huge difference when more people become aware that independent options exist.
amelius 7y ago
> Europe-wide has a search engine that deserves our preference, and that is http://qwant.com http://qwant.com Strange thing is that the domain qwant.eu is for sale.
bitL 7y ago
Does it matter though? If you want some semblance of privacy, use VPN + Tor while searching anything, and make sure no personally identifiable information goes through it. Every company has to adhere to its local law, so expecting privacy is naive. DDG's advantage is much less bloat and almost as good results as Google (in some areas arguably better), while not feeding their personalized ad machine. Qwant is worth trying as well.
yodsanklai 7y ago
> that is http://qwant.com http://qwant.com Plenty of pictures and distracting news on the front page.
- nobodyshere 7y ago
  Just cut them out with adblock and you'll be fine.
- baruchel 7y ago
  You should rather try the lite version: https://lite.qwant.com https://lite.qwant.com
klntsky 7y ago
> a search engine that deserves our preference ... because it is built and hosted in Europe Why not the opposite? It is easier for the government to seize your data if the service is under their jurisdiction.
- krageon 7y ago
  > Why not the opposite Companies that are US-based can be depended upon to leak like a sieve with very little prompting. Given that, the EU option is the smart option. In the EU, there is at least a modicum of accountability and some expectation in the law (in theory but more importantly in practice) that people are respected and left alone.
mikorym 7y ago
Can't we have an open source search engine with publicly sourced "indices"? Anyone who wants can then crawl the web and build a graph of parts of the internet. The search part and the crawling code would be open source. What's the problem?
- fghtr 7y ago
  Here you go: https://yacy.net https://yacy.net
  - Zhyl 7y ago
    What's the status with YaCy like these days? I tried installing it about 7 years ago and the results left something to be desired.
    - fghtr 7y ago
      It is still far from being actually useful afaik. We need much more people involved I guess.
      - mikorym 7y ago
        Apart from people, what are the main challenges to get to a stage where it is usable? My guess is that maintaining large indices is nontrivial in multiple aspects.
latexr 7y ago
> Talking from Germany, the preference here would be http://ecosia.com http://ecosia.com Which is essentially Bing[1], including the ads[2]. [1]: https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206153381-Where-do-Ecosia-s-search-results-come-from- https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206153381-Where... [2]: https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206019452-How-does-Ecosia-make-money- https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206019452-How-d...
itair 7y ago
Qwant use Bing for 64% of is search. https://m.nextinpact.com/brief/en-septembre-2019--les-resultats-de-qwant-search-reposaient-a-64---sur-bing-10869.htm https://m.nextinpact.com/brief/en-septembre-2019--les-result...
krageon 7y ago
Ecosia is from what I can tell a frontend for Bing. That is again a US-based solution, even if their veneer is from somewhere else (is it? I can't find it easily). As for Qwant, it says it's based in France but I know nothing about it. Just from the face of it, it's not clear that these solutions are better (Qwant is a maybe and Ecosia is a definitely not). This ambiguity coupled with their relatively unknown nature could be one reason why the EU did what it has done.

johnofthesea 7y ago

as far as I know https://swisscows.com https://swisscows.com is also hosted in Europe

Accacin 7y ago

Not doubting you, but do you have any sources for your claims? I will use Qwant in the future but at the minute it's not suitable (IMO) for daily usage. Ecosia seems like a great idea, but these kind of 'Search and earn' sites have always seemed like a scam to me and I can't find any reason to trust Ecosia over DDG.

nunobrito 7y ago
I'm a software auditor in Europe (per times consulting the European commission itself), mostly for open source licenses but also for cybersec and privacy matters. This topic with DDG is recurring since years. You cannot verify the infrastructure, it is not hosted on EU-bounded servers and they have been asked for cooperation. Nothing moved as far I follow. With Ecosia you are right. The point is that Ecosia accountable to European Law in case of scam. You can trust germans to close down the service if ever deemed to be a scam.
- DavideNL 7y ago
  What do you think about Startpage? And, which European search engine would you recommend?
  - jakub_g 7y ago
    Startpage was acquired by an adtech company a few months ago https://www.ghacks.net/2019/11/16/startpage-search-owner-changes-raise-serious-questions/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/11/16/startpage-search-owner-cha...
    - DavideNL 7y ago
      Yes i'm aware of that, but they were not 'acquired'... although it's definitely not a good development, i'd argue Startpage is still better (privacy wise) than for example Google.
      - krageon 7y ago
        > i'd argue Startpage is still better Why would you argue this? Adtech companies are one of the big sources of problems with privacy online.
  - nunobrito 7y ago
    That one was verified and passed. While sharing coffee with a colleague years ago, he argued that something smelled odd about them. In is opinion was a front for the CIA or some other sponsored group that harvests data. Mind you that he provided no facts to support this claim. I tried to inform myself as much as possible about them, about their technology and people working there. Very scarce info exists. Try it by yourself, then let me know if you do manage to find more info about them. My only recommendation at the moment is qwant on the european side. Not because of privacy, but mostly to enable diversity of choice on the continent. In case of war or embargo, consequences here would be devastating on the tech-side.
- m00dy 7y ago
  What would be the practices for infrastructure review ?
cren 7y ago
I agree about Qwant being unsuitable for daily usage. I had to stop using it after entering a search query via the omnibar in Firefox would sometimes fail, apparently at random, and redirect me to Qwant's homepage instead of the search results.
- nunobrito 7y ago
  Wouldn't know. It works OK for me and I use it on daily basis across several devices.
seiko988 7y ago
I've had very good results with cliqz as far as European search engines go. https://beta.cliqz.com/ https://beta.cliqz.com/
- Zhyl 7y ago
  I find cliqz is very good at natural language queries, but doesn't have the index size a lot of the time. You either end up with 10 results that are exactly what you were searching for or nothing.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

rambojazz 7y ago

> DuckDuckGo is only private if you trust their word. This a million times. For the same reasons why I don't trust proprietary (closed source) crypto software.

raverbashing 7y ago

> to refuse access for a trusted third-party auditor to review their infrastructure and validate (or not) their claims of privacy. Which company would accept (and pay for that) given there's no legal requirement for it? Here's a better test: DDG sets exactly one cookie in my browser, with a short value (not unique enough to track anything). Makes me trust them more than some BS popup saying "we care about your privacy" I don't see why I wouldn't trust DDG in relation to their alternatives

nunobrito 7y ago
> Which company would accept (and pay for that) given there's no legal requirement for it? Maybe relevant for a company whose business model is built around the promise of preserving end-user privacy? > I don't see why Data storage and network communication occurring inside the European space alone, rather than sending packets from European users to elsewhere unknown. Being fully accountable to European law, with base offices and employees in Europe so they are subject to the same data-protection rules as other locally-based companies. When looking at other alternatives such as Ecosia, Qwant: they do offer this and yet are seldom presented as a search engine option by Android. Strange.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- raverbashing 7y ago
  > When looking at other alternatives such as Ecosia, Qwant W.r.t. them I agree, but have they been subject to a 3rd party audit (honest question, I'm not familiar with them)? I'm not saying we should trust DDG (or any search engine) 100% without proof, but the best way of keeping your privacy is not collecting data and it seems DDG is doing that.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    We don't know what they are collecting. They could just as well be an NSA front and easily profile based on IP searches. In the end, American companies bend to US law. That is why Europeans should desire a European alternative in the first place. The workaround is using Tor.

Freegile 7y ago

Are qwant and ecosia doing their own indexing of the web? As far as I know, beta.cliqz.com is trying to do that. Starting off with a kind of crowd sourced Google scraping. Will be intersting how it evolves.

_Codemonkeyism 7y ago

"The preference of Android to place DDG in Europe (31 out of 31 countries) is strange when considering privacy as argument." DDG Marketing.

crocodiletears 7y ago

Hadn't heard of Qwant. Looks like they do their own indexing, which is good to see. Definitely an engine to keep an eye on. Ecosia is just repackaged Bing, ostensibly with a second filter/ranking pass over Bing's results iirc. Is there much difference between the two from an end-user perspective, beyond the ecology gimmick?

nunobrito 7y ago
Ecosia is a small Berlin startup. They are profitable and happy to just relay the results from other search engines. Qwant is far bigger. Aims to be a complete replacement for Google in Europe with their own datasets. They have difficulties in funding and their survival is mostly depending on public funding and eventually being accepted as default choice for companies across Europe. From that perspective, it makes a huge difference when more people become aware that independent options exist.

amelius 7y ago

> Europe-wide has a search engine that deserves our preference, and that is http://qwant.com http://qwant.com Strange thing is that the domain qwant.eu is for sale.

bitL 7y ago

Does it matter though? If you want some semblance of privacy, use VPN + Tor while searching anything, and make sure no personally identifiable information goes through it. Every company has to adhere to its local law, so expecting privacy is naive. DDG's advantage is much less bloat and almost as good results as Google (in some areas arguably better), while not feeding their personalized ad machine. Qwant is worth trying as well.

yodsanklai 7y ago

> that is http://qwant.com http://qwant.com Plenty of pictures and distracting news on the front page.

nobodyshere 7y ago
Just cut them out with adblock and you'll be fine.
baruchel 7y ago
You should rather try the lite version: https://lite.qwant.com https://lite.qwant.com

klntsky 7y ago

> a search engine that deserves our preference ... because it is built and hosted in Europe Why not the opposite? It is easier for the government to seize your data if the service is under their jurisdiction.

krageon 7y ago
> Why not the opposite Companies that are US-based can be depended upon to leak like a sieve with very little prompting. Given that, the EU option is the smart option. In the EU, there is at least a modicum of accountability and some expectation in the law (in theory but more importantly in practice) that people are respected and left alone.

mikorym 7y ago

Can't we have an open source search engine with publicly sourced "indices"? Anyone who wants can then crawl the web and build a graph of parts of the internet. The search part and the crawling code would be open source. What's the problem?

fghtr 7y ago
Here you go: https://yacy.net https://yacy.net
- Zhyl 7y ago
  What's the status with YaCy like these days? I tried installing it about 7 years ago and the results left something to be desired.
  - fghtr 7y ago
    It is still far from being actually useful afaik. We need much more people involved I guess.
    - mikorym 7y ago
      Apart from people, what are the main challenges to get to a stage where it is usable? My guess is that maintaining large indices is nontrivial in multiple aspects.

latexr 7y ago

> Talking from Germany, the preference here would be http://ecosia.com http://ecosia.com Which is essentially Bing[1], including the ads[2]. [1]: https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206153381-Where-do-Ecosia-s-search-results-come-from- https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206153381-Where... [2]: https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206019452-How-does-Ecosia-make-money- https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206019452-How-d...

itair 7y ago

Qwant use Bing for 64% of is search. https://m.nextinpact.com/brief/en-septembre-2019--les-resultats-de-qwant-search-reposaient-a-64---sur-bing-10869.htm https://m.nextinpact.com/brief/en-septembre-2019--les-result...

krageon 7y ago

Ecosia is from what I can tell a frontend for Bing. That is again a US-based solution, even if their veneer is from somewhere else (is it? I can't find it easily). As for Qwant, it says it's based in France but I know nothing about it. Just from the face of it, it's not clear that these solutions are better (Qwant is a maybe and Ecosia is a definitely not). This ambiguity coupled with their relatively unknown nature could be one reason why the EU did what it has done.