4 ms·

Speaking of leaks, I never understood why people use DDG's bangs. By using bangs you're sending your search history to DDG even when using search engines that

Speaking of leaks, I never understood why people use DDG's bangs. By using bangs you're sending your search history to DDG even when using search engines that aren't DDG.

Nextgrid 6y ago
Because it's the easiest (and sometimes only) way to get this functionality on major browsers and browser developers have no plans to implement this functionality natively.
- bad_user 6y ago
  Both Firefox and Chrome have custom search keywords: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address... I maintain a set of such keywords in my Firefox, that I use on iOS and Android too. The easiest would be to just use Google btw, as it does a reasonable job to give you the website you're thinking of just by mentioning it in the search query, e.g "Frozen imdb" (though it does a perfect job in this case with just "Frozen"). If you use DDG, because I'm assuming you value your privacy, sending your search history to DDG when you could avoid it doesn't make much sense.
  - tingol 6y ago
    I use chromium and I just type IMDB and it automatically tells me to press tab if I wan't to search imdb.com. What do bangs do better than this?
  - joveian 6y ago
    The main issue for me is that they only work in the url bar not the search bar. For the same reason people are upset about the favicon thing I don't want anything (mis)typed in the urlbar to be sent to a search engine. I've failed to find the correct setting to make this happen a few times before but just looked again and setting keyword.enabled to false prevents it from searching from the url bar (the setting is confusing and not related to the search keywords feature). I did try firefox search keyword anyway once a while ago but it isn't that easy to configure and the setting were lost not too long after I started using it (I don't remember the details but I think my profile was corrupted by ecryptfs and the keywords didn't import to a new profile or something like that). Not importing them isn't a horrible choice (if that is what actually happened) considering there doesn't seem to be an easy way to even list them, but there should at least be a distinct import/export for keywords. The search page of preferences has a keyword field next to search engines but it doesn't seem to actually list them nor can you add a keyword from that page. All in all, it doesn't seem like a feature Mozilla cares about at all, although it would be a nice feature with a bit more work. Use from right click search on text selection would be another thing that would make it much more useful. I tend to use ! in two circumstances, one as others mentioned when a DDG search didn't return what I wanted (and I am fine with letting DDG know that since it is the exact same search I just searched DDG) and secondly when I am looking for something on a particular site. Some of the second case would be best done via Firefox keyword search but the advantage of DDG is that they have a lot of obvious names going to the obvious place so rare specific searches are much more convenient than doing anything to set up a list. Since I very rarely use such searches, there isn't anything DDG could learn about me from avoiding just those searches going to DDG. OTOH, using site searches more frequently would be a win for privacy.
tome 6y ago
> you're sending your search history to DDG I was astonished by this at first, but I think you must mean "you're sending all searches performed with bangs to DDG". I worried that you meant somehow the browser search history was being sent to DDG, but that seems impossible.
mkl 6y ago
I only use bangs when regular DDG search has failed me, and I'm quite happy to tell DDG of that failure.
pelliphant 6y ago
but.. that is obvious?!? If I don't want ddg to know what I google, ofc I won't do it by typing in !g in ddg... I actually use bang functions because I want to help ddg out by informing them when I'm unhappy with the results I got from them.
- bad_user 6y ago
  So ... you're expecting them to log your searches for later analysis, or at least meta data about your searches. That's what they promise to not do and the whole point behind many people's decision to use them. And it might be obvious for some, but it still makes no sense :-) given the browser is capable of doing it.
  - pelliphant 6y ago
    well, this isn't something that I have given that much thought... But yes, when I go to ddg and type in "!g <thing>" after having typed in "<thing>", I'm on some level hoping that this is somehow informing ddg that their search results for <thing> could be better. Now, if they have somewhere stated that they are not going to do this, then yes, it would be bad.

Speaking of leaks, I never understood why people use DDG's bangs. By using bangs you're sending your search history to DDG even when using search engines that aren't DDG.

Nextgrid 6y ago

Because it's the easiest (and sometimes only) way to get this functionality on major browsers and browser developers have no plans to implement this functionality natively.

bad_user 6y ago
Both Firefox and Chrome have custom search keywords: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address... I maintain a set of such keywords in my Firefox, that I use on iOS and Android too. The easiest would be to just use Google btw, as it does a reasonable job to give you the website you're thinking of just by mentioning it in the search query, e.g "Frozen imdb" (though it does a perfect job in this case with just "Frozen"). If you use DDG, because I'm assuming you value your privacy, sending your search history to DDG when you could avoid it doesn't make much sense.
- tingol 6y ago
  I use chromium and I just type IMDB and it automatically tells me to press tab if I wan't to search imdb.com. What do bangs do better than this?
- joveian 6y ago
  The main issue for me is that they only work in the url bar not the search bar. For the same reason people are upset about the favicon thing I don't want anything (mis)typed in the urlbar to be sent to a search engine. I've failed to find the correct setting to make this happen a few times before but just looked again and setting keyword.enabled to false prevents it from searching from the url bar (the setting is confusing and not related to the search keywords feature). I did try firefox search keyword anyway once a while ago but it isn't that easy to configure and the setting were lost not too long after I started using it (I don't remember the details but I think my profile was corrupted by ecryptfs and the keywords didn't import to a new profile or something like that). Not importing them isn't a horrible choice (if that is what actually happened) considering there doesn't seem to be an easy way to even list them, but there should at least be a distinct import/export for keywords. The search page of preferences has a keyword field next to search engines but it doesn't seem to actually list them nor can you add a keyword from that page. All in all, it doesn't seem like a feature Mozilla cares about at all, although it would be a nice feature with a bit more work. Use from right click search on text selection would be another thing that would make it much more useful. I tend to use ! in two circumstances, one as others mentioned when a DDG search didn't return what I wanted (and I am fine with letting DDG know that since it is the exact same search I just searched DDG) and secondly when I am looking for something on a particular site. Some of the second case would be best done via Firefox keyword search but the advantage of DDG is that they have a lot of obvious names going to the obvious place so rare specific searches are much more convenient than doing anything to set up a list. Since I very rarely use such searches, there isn't anything DDG could learn about me from avoiding just those searches going to DDG. OTOH, using site searches more frequently would be a win for privacy.

tome 6y ago

> you're sending your search history to DDG I was astonished by this at first, but I think you must mean "you're sending all searches performed with bangs to DDG". I worried that you meant somehow the browser search history was being sent to DDG, but that seems impossible.

mkl 6y ago

I only use bangs when regular DDG search has failed me, and I'm quite happy to tell DDG of that failure.

pelliphant 6y ago

but.. that is obvious?!? If I don't want ddg to know what I google, ofc I won't do it by typing in !g in ddg... I actually use bang functions because I want to help ddg out by informing them when I'm unhappy with the results I got from them.

bad_user 6y ago
So ... you're expecting them to log your searches for later analysis, or at least meta data about your searches. That's what they promise to not do and the whole point behind many people's decision to use them. And it might be obvious for some, but it still makes no sense :-) given the browser is capable of doing it.
- pelliphant 6y ago
  well, this isn't something that I have given that much thought... But yes, when I go to ddg and type in "!g <thing>" after having typed in "<thing>", I'm on some level hoping that this is somehow informing ddg that their search results for <thing> could be better. Now, if they have somewhere stated that they are not going to do this, then yes, it would be bad.