>so are you saying they have somehow more moral grounds to stand on when it comes to not sharing user data with others given that they see no problem with takin

>so are you saying they have somehow more moral grounds to stand on when it comes to not sharing user data with others given that they see no problem with taking Google data and semi-packaging it as their own in the first place? That isn't at all what I said nor implied. The gist of my comment was DDG is the lesser evil of all parties involved. Your statement: > DDG uses Google's and other search engines' data. DDG does not do their own crawling. Please do a quick search here on HN and read up on all the previous conversations about privacy and security implications of that [...] (emphasis mine) You draw a connection between the potential third parties involved and the adverse affect to the individual's privacy and security stemming directly from their involvement. I was outlining that, if DDG was sending the request to those parties -- not the individual making the query -- the other parties wouldn't be aware of the individual unless DDG explicitly tells them (which I don't believe they do).