I’ve worked with many companies who have demonstrated “gross incompetence” when it comes to privacy and information security. This is absolutely not an example

I’ve worked with many companies who have demonstrated “gross incompetence” when it comes to privacy and information security. This is absolutely not an example of gross incompetence. I agree that for a company built around privacy even the appearance of impropriety needs to be avoided. DDG holds themselves to a higher standard and their users hold them to a higher standard. This was a design flaw and a process flaw. DDG prioritized speed and efficiency over privacy (or in this case, perceived privacy) and I suspect there isn’t a soul on HN who hasn’t made that trade off at some point. They assessed the cost/benefit and risk/reward and it turned out their assessment was wrong. Now they’re fixing it. It happens. But to call this gross incompetence is really blowing it completely out of proportion.