7 ms·

DuckDuckGo famously does not save your search history but the way things are going I fear that one day such a thing will be mandated.

panarky 5y ago
DDG famously blocked people in countries that aren't China from searching for topics that China censors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925
- celsoazevedo 5y ago
  That was caused by Microsoft (DDG uses Bing search results): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/microsoft-bing-tiananmen-tank-man-results https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/microsoft... Don't get me wrong, it doesn't make them look good, but the problem was the with the source of their results, not them censoring "tank man".
  - panarky 5y ago
    No thanks, I prefer a search engine that doesn't implement Chinese censorship when I'm not in China.
    - celsoazevedo 5y ago
      Did you mean to reply to someone else? Because as explained, DDG didn't implement any censorship.
      - panarky 5y ago
        If I use DDG outside of China, and its results are sanitized of anything that offends the CCP, I will hold DDG accountable for that. It doesn't matter if under the hood DDG sources search results from somewhere else, DDG is the one serving me censored results. DDG "implemented" censorship. DDG is accountable.
        celsoazevedo 5y ago
        From my point of view, there's a difference between displaying censored results from a 3rd party and implementing censorship. In this case, Microsoft / Bing censored their results and everyone relying on their results passed the censored results along. No doubt this is bad, but we know who did the censoring (Microsoft). DDG? I guess we can blame them for using a bad source and for not double checking stuff like this (if that's even possible/viable)? Anyway, what to use instead? The main alt search engines usually use Bing (DDG, Qwant, Ecosia, Yahoo Search, etc). The only one I'm aware that uses a different source is Startpage (they use Google), but now they're owned by an ad tech company (why not stick with Google in that case?). There's also Brave Search (they have their own index, but also include results from Google and Bing if you want), but it's still in beta and I'm not sure if it's ready yet for prime time. So... no Bing or Bing-powered search engines. What's left? Yandex? Maybe some Searx instance (which never worked that well for my needs)? Going back to Google?
        panarky 5y ago
        If Google is the only search engine that doesn't implement Chinese censorship outside of China, then that sounds a lot better than alts that censor search results via Bing.
        ColinHayhurst 5y ago
        Excuse the self promotion but to answer your question there is Gigablast and Mojeek. https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-it-work.html https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-...
pugworthy 5y ago
And ProtonMail never keeps (er, kept) IP logs. You can trust them if you want, but really can you trust any company now days?
- rank0 5y ago
  They were legally compelled to BEGIN keeping logs for a specific individual. It’s not that they had logs ready to go. They also notified the user that they had received the Swiss warrant. What should they have done differently? It’s comply with the order or dissolve the company.
- P_I_Staker 5y ago
  You were never able to trust companies.
m0zg 5y ago
History is likely saved by Bing. It's just that your address is not saved with it (assuming things are as DDG says, which I'm not sure how much I'd believe that). So net/net - just use Tor, and disable everything there is to disable as far as cookies and other methods of tracking.
midnightGhost 5y ago
DuckDuckGo does save users search history. It is stated in their privacy policy: "We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings. We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings." Startpage's privacy policy states they do not save search history: "We don't record your search queries When you search, your query is automatically stripped of unnecessary metadata including your IP address and other identifying information. We send the anonymized search query to Google and return the search results to you. We don’t log your searches. To prevent abuse such as robotic high-volume querying, we anonymously determine the frequency of popular search keywords as a part of our anti-abuse measures, while protecting your privacy."

panarky 5y ago

DDG famously blocked people in countries that aren't China from searching for topics that China censors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925

celsoazevedo 5y ago
That was caused by Microsoft (DDG uses Bing search results): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/microsoft-bing-tiananmen-tank-man-results https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/04/microsoft... Don't get me wrong, it doesn't make them look good, but the problem was the with the source of their results, not them censoring "tank man".
- panarky 5y ago
  No thanks, I prefer a search engine that doesn't implement Chinese censorship when I'm not in China.
  - celsoazevedo 5y ago
    Did you mean to reply to someone else? Because as explained, DDG didn't implement any censorship.
    - panarky 5y ago
      If I use DDG outside of China, and its results are sanitized of anything that offends the CCP, I will hold DDG accountable for that. It doesn't matter if under the hood DDG sources search results from somewhere else, DDG is the one serving me censored results. DDG "implemented" censorship. DDG is accountable.
      - celsoazevedo 5y ago
        From my point of view, there's a difference between displaying censored results from a 3rd party and implementing censorship. In this case, Microsoft / Bing censored their results and everyone relying on their results passed the censored results along. No doubt this is bad, but we know who did the censoring (Microsoft). DDG? I guess we can blame them for using a bad source and for not double checking stuff like this (if that's even possible/viable)? Anyway, what to use instead? The main alt search engines usually use Bing (DDG, Qwant, Ecosia, Yahoo Search, etc). The only one I'm aware that uses a different source is Startpage (they use Google), but now they're owned by an ad tech company (why not stick with Google in that case?). There's also Brave Search (they have their own index, but also include results from Google and Bing if you want), but it's still in beta and I'm not sure if it's ready yet for prime time. So... no Bing or Bing-powered search engines. What's left? Yandex? Maybe some Searx instance (which never worked that well for my needs)? Going back to Google?
        panarky 5y ago
        If Google is the only search engine that doesn't implement Chinese censorship outside of China, then that sounds a lot better than alts that censor search results via Bing.
        ColinHayhurst 5y ago
        Excuse the self promotion but to answer your question there is Gigablast and Mojeek. https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-it-work.html https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-...

pugworthy 5y ago

And ProtonMail never keeps (er, kept) IP logs. You can trust them if you want, but really can you trust any company now days?

rank0 5y ago
They were legally compelled to BEGIN keeping logs for a specific individual. It’s not that they had logs ready to go. They also notified the user that they had received the Swiss warrant. What should they have done differently? It’s comply with the order or dissolve the company.
P_I_Staker 5y ago
You were never able to trust companies.

m0zg 5y ago

History is likely saved by Bing. It's just that your address is not saved with it (assuming things are as DDG says, which I'm not sure how much I'd believe that). So net/net - just use Tor, and disable everything there is to disable as far as cookies and other methods of tracking.

midnightGhost 5y ago

DuckDuckGo does save users search history. It is stated in their privacy policy: "We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings. We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings." Startpage's privacy policy states they do not save search history: "We don't record your search queries When you search, your query is automatically stripped of unnecessary metadata including your IP address and other identifying information. We send the anonymized search query to Google and return the search results to you. We don’t log your searches. To prevent abuse such as robotic high-volume querying, we anonymously determine the frequency of popular search keywords as a part of our anti-abuse measures, while protecting your privacy."