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If Duck really collects user data, the moment this is found out, they’re dead, so for that reason alone, they probably don’t do it. The alternative is that they

If Duck really collects user data, the moment this is found out, they’re dead, so for that reason alone, they probably don’t do it. The alternative is that they’re betting everything on nobody ever finding out which sounds crazy.

throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
A certain philosopher named Occam would suggest that the simplest explanation for nobody finding out so far is that it is three-letter agencies who might be the ultimate funders and data buyers.
- Tao331 5y ago
  "For nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture." So I guess you're going with interpreting the scripture as "render unto Caesar that [data] which belongs to Caesar"?
- kevinh 5y ago
  Surely the simplest explanation would be that no one has found out because they don't actually collect the data.
- jstanley 5y ago
  Is that really the simplest explanation? Or is the simplest explanation that they're not lying and they do what they say they do?
- girvo 5y ago
  That’s a pretty wild misapplication of Mr. Occams blade, I’d think. There are much simpler explanations than that.
- kwatsonafter 5y ago
  A certain philosopher named Occam would suggest that appeals to conspiracy are much harder to substantiate than appeals to incompetence or irresponsibility.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    That's Hanlon. He has a "razor" that says that anyone who maintains plausible deniability should be assumed to be innocently blundering, no matter how much that blunder benefited them.
- mukesh610 5y ago
  I'm interested in the thought process that made you conclude that that is the simplest explanation
t0bia_s 5y ago
There are so many issues with DDG, but nobody cares [1]. Idea of having privacy focused search engine is strong. Then use kagi or searX. [1] https://lemmy.ml/post/31321 https://lemmy.ml/post/31321
- srg0 5y ago
  How is kagi more private? It requires an account to use, and it’s going to be a paid service. So it always has a strong user ID associated with every query. Whether it is not stored and not processed cannot be verified. It’s the same story about trust.
  - freediver 5y ago
    (Kagi dev here) Being a paid service means Kagi's incentives are different. Instead of selling your data or profiting from feeding into ad-tech food chain, we are interested in selling you a subscription. We do not associate queries with an account, as a matter of fact we do not save queries at all. You are right that this can not be verified, the question you need to ask yourself is what kind of incentive we have for misusing user data in any way. Unless users want us to do start using their search history to improve quality of searches (something we may introduce as an option in the future as we've been asked to), we have no reason to do so.
    - account42 5y ago
      > Being a paid service means Kagi's incentives are different. Instead of selling your data or profiting from feeding into ad-tech food chain, we are interested in selling you a subscription. Until your growth slows down and you realize you can get away with doing both. There are so multiple industries (TVs, Games, Streaming) where paid users are still being monetized to the maximum extend possible by showing them ads, selling their data, etc. that this argument is just dishonest now.
    - srg0 5y ago
      Personally I find that you did a great job with Kagi. I agree that the incentives are important, and I hope that Kagi will be successful and may prove that a different business model is possible. I'm also inclined to trust Kagi, but that's just that, trust and not much to lose.
derevaunseraun 5y ago
When I read about the founder and their privacy policy, I get the impression that this is something they care about. At the same time, as far as I know there has been no independent audit. Considering they made over 100 million in 2020, they clearly have the finances to fund an independent audit. It would also improve their reputation and clear up some of the uncertainty about their collection of user data in practice Even better (but more unlikely): they could open source the search engine so we all can audit them.
- arbitrandomuser 5y ago
  Open sourcing still won't solve the issue right . What they open souce needn't be exactly the same they run on their servers
- 8bitsrule 5y ago
  Back when DDG first started, Gabe was asking for ideas/opinions on features they had and might add, and I talked to him on the phone for a few minutes. He seemed a pleasant, sincere and honest person, and I've seen nothing since to contradict that. Unlikely he's got that kind of time any more ... here's a (2018?) interview (with Vivaldi, they'd just made DDB their default search), listen for yourself. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9U26IWSYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9U26IWSYE] Suspicious of most of the rotten-meat smells on the net as I am, I use DDG for everything. Compare the person(s) who said "Don't be evil" (then...) to picking the name DuckDuckGo.
autoexec 5y ago
> If Duck really collects user data, the moment this is found out, they’re dead It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out. What are the odds of that happening? I don't think we can count on someone who is being paid by a company to tell us about their actions when their livelihood/gravy train depends on it and they may be opening themselves up to legal problems for coming forward. Not may people have the sort of integrity that folks like Snowden, Klein, or Tice demonstrated and even those that do can be pressured into keeping silent.
- throwaway82652 5y ago
  >It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out. No it won't. If you have a hypothesis you can just test it out. Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it shows up anywhere else. This trick is as old as using a honeypot name or email address to test if a service signs you up for junk mail.
  - autoexec 5y ago
    > Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it shows up anywhere else. this is not a valid test, for a whole lot of reasons. especially not in terms of internet search engines. One reason for this, is that the specific things you search aren't what's actually valuable. Companies use that data to make guesses about you. It's those guesses, not your specific search terms, that are used to profile you. So why not just try to get yourself profiled a certain way? Search a bunch of stuff about a specific disease and click a bunch of the links and see if you start getting targeted ads about those diseases? Well, who is to say who sold that data? Was it the search engine, or the websites you clicked on? Not all the data collected on you is used for targeted ads, and of course even when it is used for ads not all of those targeted ads demonstrate a proven link back to your search teams. If you see an ad for cheap airline tickets maybe it's because you've been searching for stuff about another country, or maybe some algorithm thinks your bipolar and entering a manic phase since they are more likely to buy tickets. Maybe it's just an ad for cheap airline tickets because the airline wants more people to fly right while weather warms. You can't know. Better ways to test what DDG is doing behind the scenes might be things like get hired there in a central role. Have the government or an independent auditor review their data collection practices.
belter 5y ago
Lately, almost every conspiracy theory has been proven true. Or a more outrageous conspiracy theory is based on somewhat less aggravating true facts, that are then misconstrued as a more far fetched conspiracy:-)
- SapporoChris 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories I am very interested in seeing you explain which ones have been proven true and your citing of sources.
  - belter 5y ago
    Example A - Outrageous But False Claim's: Pizzagate -> "Debunked conspiracy theory that after Hillary Clinton's campaign email hack falsely claimed emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and alleged human trafficking child sex ring" Minor But Still Serious and True Facts: Anthony Weiner was elected for New York congressional terms as Democrat politician 7 times. In September 2016, claims were published that Weiner had engaged in sexting with a 15-year-old girl from North Carolina, and devices owned by Weiner were seized as part of an investigation into this incident. The report prompted a criminal investigation and Weiner's laptop was seized. Emails that were pertinent to the Hillary Clinton email controversy were discovered on the laptop; The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors were weighing whether or not to bring child pornography charges against Weiner over the incident On May 19, 2017, Weiner pleaded guilty to another, unrelated sexting charge of transferring obscene material to a minor, and was sentenced to 21 months in prison, ordered to pay a $10,000 fine, and was required to permanently register as a sex offender. Example B - Crazy Conspiracy Theory: Government Was Stealing Dead Bodies to do Radioactive Testing. True: “Project Sunshine" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SUNSHINE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SUNSHINE Example C - Conspiracy: The Dalai Lama is a CIA agent. Minor But Still Serious and True Facts: ...According to declassified intelligence documents, The Dalai Lama earned $180,000 in connection with the CIA’s funding of the Tibetan Resistance to the tune of $1.7 million per year... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program Example D - Conspiracy: The government is using it's vast resources to track citizens. True: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
amelius 5y ago
Perhaps they just keep the data in a vault just in case it might become useful someday. Not many people need to know about that. It can be just some box sitting at the point where data enters the datacenter. That's the darkest theory I can come up with. Anyway, I'm a happy DDG user (on devices where typing "!g" isn't a pain).
mastazi 5y ago
> The alternative [..] sounds crazy I also think that it is unlikely but, let's not forget that some unlikely things are regularly found to be true. In 2019 many thought that a global pandemic was unlikely, in 2007 they thought that a housing market crash was unlikely, and so on. Personally, I think an independent audit would go a long way in clearing up my doubts.
ummonk 5y ago
I mean Okta’s core business is authentication so we’d expect them to do the bare minimum in disclosing security breaches and yet we saw how that went recently.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
Thats the philosophy of every criminal entity including govts, police, security services and everyone else.

throwawaybutwhy 5y ago

A certain philosopher named Occam would suggest that the simplest explanation for nobody finding out so far is that it is three-letter agencies who might be the ultimate funders and data buyers.

Tao331 5y ago
"For nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture." So I guess you're going with interpreting the scripture as "render unto Caesar that [data] which belongs to Caesar"?
kevinh 5y ago
Surely the simplest explanation would be that no one has found out because they don't actually collect the data.
jstanley 5y ago
Is that really the simplest explanation? Or is the simplest explanation that they're not lying and they do what they say they do?
girvo 5y ago
That’s a pretty wild misapplication of Mr. Occams blade, I’d think. There are much simpler explanations than that.
kwatsonafter 5y ago
A certain philosopher named Occam would suggest that appeals to conspiracy are much harder to substantiate than appeals to incompetence or irresponsibility.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  That's Hanlon. He has a "razor" that says that anyone who maintains plausible deniability should be assumed to be innocently blundering, no matter how much that blunder benefited them.
mukesh610 5y ago
I'm interested in the thought process that made you conclude that that is the simplest explanation

t0bia_s 5y ago

There are so many issues with DDG, but nobody cares [1]. Idea of having privacy focused search engine is strong. Then use kagi or searX. [1] https://lemmy.ml/post/31321 https://lemmy.ml/post/31321

srg0 5y ago
How is kagi more private? It requires an account to use, and it’s going to be a paid service. So it always has a strong user ID associated with every query. Whether it is not stored and not processed cannot be verified. It’s the same story about trust.
- freediver 5y ago
  (Kagi dev here) Being a paid service means Kagi's incentives are different. Instead of selling your data or profiting from feeding into ad-tech food chain, we are interested in selling you a subscription. We do not associate queries with an account, as a matter of fact we do not save queries at all. You are right that this can not be verified, the question you need to ask yourself is what kind of incentive we have for misusing user data in any way. Unless users want us to do start using their search history to improve quality of searches (something we may introduce as an option in the future as we've been asked to), we have no reason to do so.
  - account42 5y ago
    > Being a paid service means Kagi's incentives are different. Instead of selling your data or profiting from feeding into ad-tech food chain, we are interested in selling you a subscription. Until your growth slows down and you realize you can get away with doing both. There are so multiple industries (TVs, Games, Streaming) where paid users are still being monetized to the maximum extend possible by showing them ads, selling their data, etc. that this argument is just dishonest now.
  - srg0 5y ago
    Personally I find that you did a great job with Kagi. I agree that the incentives are important, and I hope that Kagi will be successful and may prove that a different business model is possible. I'm also inclined to trust Kagi, but that's just that, trust and not much to lose.

derevaunseraun 5y ago

When I read about the founder and their privacy policy, I get the impression that this is something they care about. At the same time, as far as I know there has been no independent audit. Considering they made over 100 million in 2020, they clearly have the finances to fund an independent audit. It would also improve their reputation and clear up some of the uncertainty about their collection of user data in practice Even better (but more unlikely): they could open source the search engine so we all can audit them.

arbitrandomuser 5y ago
Open sourcing still won't solve the issue right . What they open souce needn't be exactly the same they run on their servers
8bitsrule 5y ago
Back when DDG first started, Gabe was asking for ideas/opinions on features they had and might add, and I talked to him on the phone for a few minutes. He seemed a pleasant, sincere and honest person, and I've seen nothing since to contradict that. Unlikely he's got that kind of time any more ... here's a (2018?) interview (with Vivaldi, they'd just made DDB their default search), listen for yourself. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9U26IWSYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9U26IWSYE] Suspicious of most of the rotten-meat smells on the net as I am, I use DDG for everything. Compare the person(s) who said "Don't be evil" (then...) to picking the name DuckDuckGo.

autoexec 5y ago

> If Duck really collects user data, the moment this is found out, they’re dead It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out. What are the odds of that happening? I don't think we can count on someone who is being paid by a company to tell us about their actions when their livelihood/gravy train depends on it and they may be opening themselves up to legal problems for coming forward. Not may people have the sort of integrity that folks like Snowden, Klein, or Tice demonstrated and even those that do can be pressured into keeping silent.

throwaway82652 5y ago
>It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out. No it won't. If you have a hypothesis you can just test it out. Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it shows up anywhere else. This trick is as old as using a honeypot name or email address to test if a service signs you up for junk mail.
- autoexec 5y ago
  > Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it shows up anywhere else. this is not a valid test, for a whole lot of reasons. especially not in terms of internet search engines. One reason for this, is that the specific things you search aren't what's actually valuable. Companies use that data to make guesses about you. It's those guesses, not your specific search terms, that are used to profile you. So why not just try to get yourself profiled a certain way? Search a bunch of stuff about a specific disease and click a bunch of the links and see if you start getting targeted ads about those diseases? Well, who is to say who sold that data? Was it the search engine, or the websites you clicked on? Not all the data collected on you is used for targeted ads, and of course even when it is used for ads not all of those targeted ads demonstrate a proven link back to your search teams. If you see an ad for cheap airline tickets maybe it's because you've been searching for stuff about another country, or maybe some algorithm thinks your bipolar and entering a manic phase since they are more likely to buy tickets. Maybe it's just an ad for cheap airline tickets because the airline wants more people to fly right while weather warms. You can't know. Better ways to test what DDG is doing behind the scenes might be things like get hired there in a central role. Have the government or an independent auditor review their data collection practices.

belter 5y ago

Lately, almost every conspiracy theory has been proven true. Or a more outrageous conspiracy theory is based on somewhat less aggravating true facts, that are then misconstrued as a more far fetched conspiracy:-)

SapporoChris 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories I am very interested in seeing you explain which ones have been proven true and your citing of sources.
- belter 5y ago
  Example A - Outrageous But False Claim's: Pizzagate -> "Debunked conspiracy theory that after Hillary Clinton's campaign email hack falsely claimed emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and alleged human trafficking child sex ring" Minor But Still Serious and True Facts: Anthony Weiner was elected for New York congressional terms as Democrat politician 7 times. In September 2016, claims were published that Weiner had engaged in sexting with a 15-year-old girl from North Carolina, and devices owned by Weiner were seized as part of an investigation into this incident. The report prompted a criminal investigation and Weiner's laptop was seized. Emails that were pertinent to the Hillary Clinton email controversy were discovered on the laptop; The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors were weighing whether or not to bring child pornography charges against Weiner over the incident On May 19, 2017, Weiner pleaded guilty to another, unrelated sexting charge of transferring obscene material to a minor, and was sentenced to 21 months in prison, ordered to pay a $10,000 fine, and was required to permanently register as a sex offender. Example B - Crazy Conspiracy Theory: Government Was Stealing Dead Bodies to do Radioactive Testing. True: “Project Sunshine" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SUNSHINE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SUNSHINE Example C - Conspiracy: The Dalai Lama is a CIA agent. Minor But Still Serious and True Facts: ...According to declassified intelligence documents, The Dalai Lama earned $180,000 in connection with the CIA’s funding of the Tibetan Resistance to the tune of $1.7 million per year... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program Example D - Conspiracy: The government is using it's vast resources to track citizens. True: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

amelius 5y ago

Perhaps they just keep the data in a vault just in case it might become useful someday. Not many people need to know about that. It can be just some box sitting at the point where data enters the datacenter. That's the darkest theory I can come up with. Anyway, I'm a happy DDG user (on devices where typing "!g" isn't a pain).

mastazi 5y ago

> The alternative [..] sounds crazy I also think that it is unlikely but, let's not forget that some unlikely things are regularly found to be true. In 2019 many thought that a global pandemic was unlikely, in 2007 they thought that a housing market crash was unlikely, and so on. Personally, I think an independent audit would go a long way in clearing up my doubts.

ummonk 5y ago

I mean Okta’s core business is authentication so we’d expect them to do the bare minimum in disclosing security breaches and yet we saw how that went recently.

Terry_Roll 5y ago

Thats the philosophy of every criminal entity including govts, police, security services and everyone else.