5 ms·

DuckDuckGo's privacy abuses – current, historic, and by proxy

20 points by mercer 6y ago

laumars 6y ago
I'm all for holding businesses to account but the arguments made on that site are pretty poor. For example, why should it matter that DDG uses Microsoft Outlook for their corporate emails? That has no baring on the DDG's ability to deliver a more privacy-focused search. The expectation some people have about how some businesses or projects should be run is a little absurd.
- TheChaplain 6y ago
  Indeed. That and the wording of the text make it look more like a "hit piece" against DDG.
vertex-four 6y ago
I have no idea what this site is, but it won't load for me, at all - I just get a spinning circle for a few minutes. Ublock Origin doesn't claim to be blocking anything, so I don't know what's going on.
- rnestler 6y ago
  Same here. It finally loaded when I went to the main page first and then back to the post itself.
- AnonC 6y ago
  Try reloading. That's what worked for me. Even I was stuck with the spinning icon the first time.
- bad_user 6y ago
  JavaScript-powered publication fear mongering about privacy, classic.
  - robjan 6y ago
    It's not a publication, just a post on some reddit clone
pixxel 6y ago
Oof, that’s not a pretty read for DDG. So now what!? Often I look at people around me who are blissfully unaware of data mining etc. and feel envious. It’s tiring.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bad_user 6y ago
I'm super skeptical of DuckDuckGo, but most of that is circumstantial and childish. Apparently you're abusing privacy if you're using AWS from "privacy-abuser Amazon", or Outlook for your email, or selling T-shirts on a Cloudflare-powered website. By that definition 99% of online businesses are abusing user privacy.
- Pedrit0 6y ago
  Hi. Why are you generally skeptical about DDG ?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
LetThereBeNick 6y ago
Does “uses the Bing API” mean that the search results are all fetched from Bing? As in DDG doesn’t have it’s own search algorithm? I’m surprised
- bad_user 6y ago
  Crawling the web is expensive, barrier to entry is very high. Many alternative search engines claim to have built their own crawler, however their coverage is small and they have to fallback to Bing or Google. You can actually check this btw. The results on Bing are identical to DuckDuckGo's in many cases, which are often inferior to those of Google. When different make sure the "location" parameters are the same and clear Bing's cookies, although local searches are absolutely terrible in Bing/DDG anyway. But they sometimes diverge on some queries, either because DuckDuckGo's cache is not up to date, or because it had relevant results in its own index. But yes, if Bing closes its API, DuckDuckGo either switches to Google or it's dead in the water.
AnonC 6y ago
I don't know what to think of partnering with Bing and Yahoo or for using AWS. I don't see those as particularly bad for a search engine that's starting from scratch. Maybe we should expect more from DDG since it's no longer the new kid on the block and has money to reduce or eliminate such dependencies. I always take care of cookies and tracking to the extent I can. So I don't know what else I can do to avoid using DDG or even Google (which I resort to for searches where DDG is inadequate). > DDG is currently collecting users’ operating systems and everything they highlight in the search results. (to verify this, simply hit F12 in your browser and select the “network” tab. Do a search with javascript enabled. Highlight some text on the screen. Mouseover the traffic rows and see that your highlighted text, operating system, and other details relating to geolocation are sent to DDG. Then change the query and submit. Notice that the previous query is being transmitted with the new query to link the queries together) FWIW, I couldn't find this behavior (or maybe I didn't figure out how to exactly check this) even when blocking nothing on DDG. Can someone confirm if this is true (or was true in the past but no longer true)?
- bm3719 6y ago
  Just tried, and it's true. Two REST calls to improving.duckduckgo.com are made. Can't tell if my OS and location is encoded in the query params, but there's at least a dozen or so populated fields.
Pedrit0 6y ago
Does someone have the knowledge / expertise to dig into these critics ? Well, the critics about partnerships and Cloudflare look like low level activism BS, but am interested in what is said under the section "Direct Privacy Abuse" in the article. Are these statements true and do we have to worry about that ?
nieve 6y ago
Having seen parts of the original Names Database code my only objection to DuckDuckGo is that somehow it might have been contagious and infected DDG when Gabriel Weinberg launched the latter. This seems unlikely, but it was the most unfortunate Perl code I've seen in my career. On the other hand it _worked_, so perhaps I shouldn't judge it too harshly.

20 points by mercer 6y ago

I'm all for holding businesses to account but the arguments made on that site are pretty poor. For example, why should it matter that DDG uses Microsoft Outlook for their corporate emails? That has no baring on the DDG's ability to deliver a more privacy-focused search. The expectation some people have about how some businesses or projects should be run is a little absurd.

TheChaplain 6y ago
Indeed. That and the wording of the text make it look more like a "hit piece" against DDG.

vertex-four 6y ago

I have no idea what this site is, but it won't load for me, at all - I just get a spinning circle for a few minutes. Ublock Origin doesn't claim to be blocking anything, so I don't know what's going on.

rnestler 6y ago
Same here. It finally loaded when I went to the main page first and then back to the post itself.
AnonC 6y ago
Try reloading. That's what worked for me. Even I was stuck with the spinning icon the first time.
bad_user 6y ago
JavaScript-powered publication fear mongering about privacy, classic.
- robjan 6y ago
  It's not a publication, just a post on some reddit clone

pixxel 6y ago

Oof, that’s not a pretty read for DDG. So now what!? Often I look at people around me who are blissfully unaware of data mining etc. and feel envious. It’s tiring.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bad_user 6y ago

I'm super skeptical of DuckDuckGo, but most of that is circumstantial and childish. Apparently you're abusing privacy if you're using AWS from "privacy-abuser Amazon", or Outlook for your email, or selling T-shirts on a Cloudflare-powered website. By that definition 99% of online businesses are abusing user privacy.

Pedrit0 6y ago
Hi. Why are you generally skeptical about DDG ?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

LetThereBeNick 6y ago

Does “uses the Bing API” mean that the search results are all fetched from Bing? As in DDG doesn’t have it’s own search algorithm? I’m surprised

bad_user 6y ago
Crawling the web is expensive, barrier to entry is very high. Many alternative search engines claim to have built their own crawler, however their coverage is small and they have to fallback to Bing or Google. You can actually check this btw. The results on Bing are identical to DuckDuckGo's in many cases, which are often inferior to those of Google. When different make sure the "location" parameters are the same and clear Bing's cookies, although local searches are absolutely terrible in Bing/DDG anyway. But they sometimes diverge on some queries, either because DuckDuckGo's cache is not up to date, or because it had relevant results in its own index. But yes, if Bing closes its API, DuckDuckGo either switches to Google or it's dead in the water.

AnonC 6y ago

I don't know what to think of partnering with Bing and Yahoo or for using AWS. I don't see those as particularly bad for a search engine that's starting from scratch. Maybe we should expect more from DDG since it's no longer the new kid on the block and has money to reduce or eliminate such dependencies. I always take care of cookies and tracking to the extent I can. So I don't know what else I can do to avoid using DDG or even Google (which I resort to for searches where DDG is inadequate). > DDG is currently collecting users’ operating systems and everything they highlight in the search results. (to verify this, simply hit F12 in your browser and select the “network” tab. Do a search with javascript enabled. Highlight some text on the screen. Mouseover the traffic rows and see that your highlighted text, operating system, and other details relating to geolocation are sent to DDG. Then change the query and submit. Notice that the previous query is being transmitted with the new query to link the queries together) FWIW, I couldn't find this behavior (or maybe I didn't figure out how to exactly check this) even when blocking nothing on DDG. Can someone confirm if this is true (or was true in the past but no longer true)?

bm3719 6y ago
Just tried, and it's true. Two REST calls to improving.duckduckgo.com are made. Can't tell if my OS and location is encoded in the query params, but there's at least a dozen or so populated fields.

Pedrit0 6y ago

Does someone have the knowledge / expertise to dig into these critics ? Well, the critics about partnerships and Cloudflare look like low level activism BS, but am interested in what is said under the section "Direct Privacy Abuse" in the article. Are these statements true and do we have to worry about that ?

nieve 6y ago

Having seen parts of the original Names Database code my only objection to DuckDuckGo is that somehow it might have been contagious and infected DDG when Gabriel Weinberg launched the latter. This seems unlikely, but it was the most unfortunate Perl code I've seen in my career. On the other hand it _worked_, so perhaps I shouldn't judge it too harshly.