8 ms·
Ask HN: Do you use the browser address bar to search?
I just found out that Firefox makes a DNS request if my search is a single word, revealing my search to whomever is resolving the DNS query.
- matt321 4y agoexclusively yes
- ZonkedEdge 4y ago
- PaulHoule 4y agoyes
- voioo 4y agoAll the time yep.
- pwason 4y agoSometimes, but usually have a separate search field.
- car_analogy 4y agoNever. I use separate search and address fields for exactly this reason - to not reveal URLs to the search provider, and to not reveal searches to the DNS.
- nittanymount 4y agoyes, almost every time.
- muthdra 4y agoThat's why I always salt my one-word searches with a prepending random string.
- majora2007 4y agoAlways
- night-rider 4y agoYeah Firefox leaks single words because it thinks it’s a localhost domain. You can avoid this by putting single words in “quotations”. Sad that you have to do that, but also: what’s your threat model?
- arinlen 4y agoI use the address bar for search all the time, not only bookmarks but also assigned search shortcuts.
- ChrisGranger 4y agoI believe the about:config switches "browser.fixup.dns_first_for_single_words" set to false and "browser.urlbar.dnsResolveSingleWordsAfterSearch" set to 0 (zero) stop this.
- zzo38computer 4y agoYes, but the way that I have it configured, it is not confused with a search and a not search, so it does not have that problem. To search must be a colon and then specify what to be searched on and then a space and then the search query; if it does not start with a colon then it is treated as a relative (not absolute) URL.
- jawmes8 4y agoNever thought twice about it until now
- ceasesurthinko 4y agoI don't think I've visited the homepage of https://www.google.com/ https://www.google.com/ in a decade. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button click rate probably dropped 99.99% ever since browsers started including search in the address bar.