9 ms·

DuckDuckGo now blocks Google sign-in pop-ups on all sites

184 points by elorant 4y ago

kamray23 4y ago
Barely news, to be honest. Just blocks the annoying popup and the requests that popping it up causes. Google Sign-In still explicitly possible, you just don't get a pop-up. One annoyance less.
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  ...it was news for me. As a Brave browser user, there are a few social media switches in the setting that i have set to 'off'; combined with this - things should be even better (as well as having another reason to go through the ://flags settings). I rotate through my available built-in search engine[s] in Brave, I'll go back to ddg to try this out. Nb - search with all engines this past 18months has been uniformly 'poor'.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Give kagi (paid) a shot. It's been the only tolerable option for me and has been working well even on obscure searches.
propogandist 4y ago
>BleepingComputer has found that the option is baked into the general protection feature of the browser extension, so when the extension is active, all Google prompts are blocked automatically. pop-up modal blocking becomes a standout "protection feature" when duckduckgo buys a big native ad to make this seem newsworthy
Raed667 4y ago
DDG are really good at generating headlines for the smallest stuff they release.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Haven't seen a headline about them making search better. Seems like every search engine this year got markedly worse. Even the alternatives are pretty poor. I want to say I'd rather pick an independent alternative, but even that space is bleak. A founder here most famously made a fool out of himself and represented his search startup so poorly and asserting that not only would people pay for his search app, but that it was in the interest of privacy, while also requiring a browser extension.
  - dazc 4y ago
    'Seems like every search engine this year got markedly worse' Maybe the sum total of available content got worse instead? Will 2023 be better, I suspect not.
    - willhinsa 4y ago
      If a search engine cannot recognize what content is good and which is bad, it's not a good search engine. If there was a sea of garbage with some beautiful healthy fish still in it, it doesn't mean I'm going to start catching garbage and passing it off as halibut. But the model of constant growth required and advertising to cross purposes of your users means that they're selling garbage by the pound and calling it fish! I have no interest in agreeing that the emperor's new clothes exist.
      - janalsncm 4y ago
        There are two possibilities: 1. Search engines are getting less good at ranking bad content below good content 2. The good content is getting worse. So bad, in fact, that it looks like bad content. It may be a little of both. I lean towards 2, though. It’s kind of a race to the bottom in terms of jamming your page with ads, buzz words, and popups these days. Generally speaking, the web doesn’t have great results for e.g. product recommendations. Part of it is because of how centralized the internet has become. The best you can do a lot of the time is to just serve mostly Reddit results. But even that can be gamed.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Thank god. That was irritating. Now also do the cookie popups.
- yegg 4y ago
  Thanks. On cookie popups: * Our Mac browser already does this, announcement for that was here: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-for-mac-open-beta/ https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-for-mac-open-beta/ * It's open source at: https://github.com/duckduckgo/autoconsent https://github.com/duckduckgo/autoconsent * For our Android app it is in beta, and you can enabled it in settings. * For our iOS app, it is coming soon, and then we'll work on extensions. * We're updating this page quarterly for all our Web Tracking Protections across platforms: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/web-tracking-protections/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we...
  - andybee 4y ago
    Cool, considering switching as well. At first glance so much Apple stuff, thinking that somehow iOS and Apple devices are more privacy friendly is kind of a false analogy. Apple has lied about privacy protections and if you look into it you will find that Apple collects data for itself while blocking others from doing it (from their "ad campaign"). For example, if you opt out of health data, Apple still collects this information in the background but just doesn't show it to you. AppStore has been shown to collect extensive data as well. Don't put all your eggs into the Apple basket.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    That ... could be compelling. Aside from desktop (Firefox), much of my browsing now is on an e-ink tablet. I've found that an e-ink optimised browser, specifically EinkBro, is strongly preferable there. That browser has some features addressing Web annoyances (adblock, somewhat lackluster cookie and JS toggles), but does nothing against cookie pop-ups. A DDG browser with e-ink tuning might be interesting. EinkBro: <https://github.com/plateaukao/browser https://github.com/plateaukao/browser> Useful features: - Paginated navigation. This is based on touch regions rather than gestures. - Black-on-white mode. Forces a white background and enhances blacks in text. - A really nifty "save as e-pub" feature. More here: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107958709435468728 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107958709435468728> - A ... not especially good reader-mode feature. (Better CSS styling w/ some margins would help a lot.) - Integrated adblock. - Good bookmarking for a mobile browser. <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/38e0c530966001391066002590d8e506 https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/38e0c53096600139106600...> As to why e-ink needs tuning: - Persistence is free. - Pixels are cheap. (Lots of them, very high DPI, 200--300+.) - Paints are expensive and slow --- draw power and even at high-performance, at best a few Hz. High-quality is more like 1 to 0.25 Hz. - Animated anything sucks. - Pagination hugely beats scroll. More: <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba8448a5b29e257 https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...>
SquareWheel 4y ago
Note that these prompts can also be disabled in your Google account settings. I find them very irritating so I've disabled it on all accounts I manage. https://www.howtogeek.com/735152/how-to-turn-off-the-sign-in-with-google-prompt-on-websites/ https://www.howtogeek.com/735152/how-to-turn-off-the-sign-in...
- kramerger 4y ago
  Doesn't that require you to be logged in with Google already?
  - SquareWheel 4y ago
    Yes. If you're not logged in with Google, you won't get these prompts in the first place. edit: Some comments below suggesting this is mistaken. Sorry, I hadn't noticed that in the past.
    - kramerger 4y ago
      Don't you get the other one, about logging in with Google?
      - probably_wrong 4y ago
        Yes, you do.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Not true at all. Happens even in incognito/private windows.
      - giancarlostoro 4y ago
        Is this only whilst using Google Chrome? Cause technically most people on Chrome login to it
        4y ago
supriyo-biswas 4y ago
Unfortunately, I have to take the contrarian view and agree with some of the grayed out (presumably downvoted?) comments here that DDG's search featureset has stagnated and they're solely relying on the narrative of "Big Tech Bad!" to carry their brand and product forward. "Big Tech Bad!" isn't in of itself an issue and can be a viable marketing message for ad blockers, VPNs, and products in that space. However, I'm afraid the real innovation in search is happening elsewhere; either in the form of traditional search engines (Kagi, you.com) or large language models (ChatGPT, LaMDA etc.)
- netr0ute 4y ago
  > they're solely relying on the narrative of "Big Tech Bad!" to carry their brand and product forward. I don't know, that is kind of the whole purpose of DDG to begin with.
  - supriyo-biswas 4y ago
    Every company can market themselves the way they want. I’m simply lamenting the choice that DDG has made, in the same way Steve Jobs lamented the marketing-heavy PepsiCo for a lack of attention towards their products.
- yegg 4y ago
  We have actually been continually working on improving our search results. We're working on a new page to detail major updates on a quarterly basis, which should be live in a few weeks. At the same time, we've been continuously developing our Web Tracking Protections for our browsers and extensions. We also made a page for that here that is already out: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/web-tracking-protections/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we...
  - notlukesky 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - 4y ago
ck2 4y ago
How long is DDG's contract with Bing? Amazing how far they've come just as a Bing proxy but if they are ever cut off, they will be gone overnight. BTW how do people know they truly are anonymous, has their code/connection to Bing ever been audited?
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  They weren't just a Bing proxy. They also mixed in Yandex results which were obvious when they were links to Russian language sites.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I hate that one of the results of that arrangement is that 50% of news search results are the MSN version of articles posted elsewhere. Another 40% of the results are the Yahoo version of an article posted elsewhere; I assume that's not a Bing thing, but it's a bad thing.
gareth_untether 4y ago
Thank goodness, it is a terribly annoying pop up that reminded me of surfing the net a decade ago. What is Google thinking? Thanks to DuckDuckGo for a great upgrade.
lapcat 4y ago
div#credential_picker_container > iframe[src^="https://accounts.google.com/"], iframe#credential_picker_iframe[src^="https://accounts.google.com/"] { display: none !important; } That's all you need. Covers both desktop and mobile.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Thank you for this snippet. I hate those windows and they seem to always appear on the scammiest of sites.
- DavideNL 4y ago
  I wonder if there's (uBlock Origin) filter lists with only separate / specific things like this, which keeps up to date with latest updates/changes. There's `AdGuard Annoyances` and `Fanboy’s Annoyance` lists (which i assume also have this blocking rule), but these big lists frequently break things unfortunately, so i avoid them.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Does blocking elements through CSS prevent all traffic to the designated site, or only prevent it from displaying? I do this frequently simply because I find such elements visually annoying. I'd be all the happier if doing so also disabled tracking. I'm referring not only to iframe elements, but the whole slew of social-share link-litter that's so prevalent on websites now.
  - DavideNL 4y ago
    > "Does blocking elements through CSS prevent all traffic to the designated site, or only prevent it from displaying?" That's a cosmetic filter. Look at 'Cosmetic filters' vs 'Network filters' [1] > "social-share link-litter" You can block these with a list like 'AdGuard Social Media' or 'Fanboy’s Social'. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Does-uBlock-Origin-block-ads-or-just-hide-them%3F https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Does-uBlock-Origin-bl...
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
we_never_see_it 4y ago
[dead]
somehnacct3757 4y ago
What content blockers do people use alongside Safari on iOS? I've been trying Firefox Focus but it's barebones, ad-centric, and doing nothing for cookie popups. Now with these Google popups infesting the web it feels like the 90s again and has made me stop browsing the web on my tablet.
- bunnyfoofoo 4y ago
  I’m using Wipr combined with NextDNS. It doesn’t block these by default, but I added the accounts.google.com domain to NextDNS.
- foreverCarlos 4y ago
  AdGuard Pro. It’s a paid (one-time fee) app that works almost as well as uBlock Origin on desktop.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Wipr.
- lazycouchpotato 4y ago
  I've been using Orion browser for a while. It did not show the Google pop-up like Safari did. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id1484498200 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id148449...
charcircuit 4y ago
This just makes average user's lives harder in signing up for sites.
- WASDx 4y ago
  I assume it's just the pop-up that requests you to sign up that is blocked, not when you explicitly want to sign up.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    It's useful to inform users that they can easily sign up without having to go through a confusing account creation process and having to worry about the site's security
    - t-writescode 4y ago
      And yet Reddit asks me to sign in with Google, *even when I'm currently signed in with my Reddit account*. Yeah, no. It's almost always an anti-pattern that's designed to get someone's real identity through their gmail account
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        That sounds like a bug in reddit. Did you report it?
- andybee 4y ago
  Yeah, but giving all website interaction data to a company for "convenience" is exactly not how to make that easier. The logins and account information belong on the client side along with the person; and should be implemented fully on a client (with a separate encrypted backup strategy). The way this whole thing was implemented is so it can be abused.
archsurface 4y ago
Good riddance. I have zero tolerance for that obnoxious dark pattern.
solarkraft 4y ago
Nice, but I think this should be uBlock Origin's job.
musicale 4y ago
My dream web browser settings: √ Never autoplay anything; not even you(tube) √ Block slideovers, overlays, and modal popups √ No, I do not want to sign in with Google √ No, I don't want your stupid tracking cookies √ No, I don't want to sign up for any newsletters
- gcanyon 4y ago
  For me I'd add: √ No, I don't want alerts from you √ No, I don't want to give you my location

184 points by elorant 4y ago

Barely news, to be honest. Just blocks the annoying popup and the requests that popping it up causes. Google Sign-In still explicitly possible, you just don't get a pop-up. One annoyance less.

InCityDreams 4y ago
...it was news for me. As a Brave browser user, there are a few social media switches in the setting that i have set to 'off'; combined with this - things should be even better (as well as having another reason to go through the ://flags settings). I rotate through my available built-in search engine[s] in Brave, I'll go back to ddg to try this out. Nb - search with all engines this past 18months has been uniformly 'poor'.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Give kagi (paid) a shot. It's been the only tolerable option for me and has been working well even on obscure searches.

propogandist 4y ago

>BleepingComputer has found that the option is baked into the general protection feature of the browser extension, so when the extension is active, all Google prompts are blocked automatically. pop-up modal blocking becomes a standout "protection feature" when duckduckgo buys a big native ad to make this seem newsworthy

Raed667 4y ago

DDG are really good at generating headlines for the smallest stuff they release.

aliqot 4y ago
Haven't seen a headline about them making search better. Seems like every search engine this year got markedly worse. Even the alternatives are pretty poor. I want to say I'd rather pick an independent alternative, but even that space is bleak. A founder here most famously made a fool out of himself and represented his search startup so poorly and asserting that not only would people pay for his search app, but that it was in the interest of privacy, while also requiring a browser extension.
- dazc 4y ago
  'Seems like every search engine this year got markedly worse' Maybe the sum total of available content got worse instead? Will 2023 be better, I suspect not.
  - willhinsa 4y ago
    If a search engine cannot recognize what content is good and which is bad, it's not a good search engine. If there was a sea of garbage with some beautiful healthy fish still in it, it doesn't mean I'm going to start catching garbage and passing it off as halibut. But the model of constant growth required and advertising to cross purposes of your users means that they're selling garbage by the pound and calling it fish! I have no interest in agreeing that the emperor's new clothes exist.
    - janalsncm 4y ago
      There are two possibilities: 1. Search engines are getting less good at ranking bad content below good content 2. The good content is getting worse. So bad, in fact, that it looks like bad content. It may be a little of both. I lean towards 2, though. It’s kind of a race to the bottom in terms of jamming your page with ads, buzz words, and popups these days. Generally speaking, the web doesn’t have great results for e.g. product recommendations. Part of it is because of how centralized the internet has become. The best you can do a lot of the time is to just serve mostly Reddit results. But even that can be gamed.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

Thank god. That was irritating. Now also do the cookie popups.

yegg 4y ago
Thanks. On cookie popups: * Our Mac browser already does this, announcement for that was here: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-for-mac-open-beta/ https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-for-mac-open-beta/ * It's open source at: https://github.com/duckduckgo/autoconsent https://github.com/duckduckgo/autoconsent * For our Android app it is in beta, and you can enabled it in settings. * For our iOS app, it is coming soon, and then we'll work on extensions. * We're updating this page quarterly for all our Web Tracking Protections across platforms: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/web-tracking-protections/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we...
- andybee 4y ago
  Cool, considering switching as well. At first glance so much Apple stuff, thinking that somehow iOS and Apple devices are more privacy friendly is kind of a false analogy. Apple has lied about privacy protections and if you look into it you will find that Apple collects data for itself while blocking others from doing it (from their "ad campaign"). For example, if you opt out of health data, Apple still collects this information in the background but just doesn't show it to you. AppStore has been shown to collect extensive data as well. Don't put all your eggs into the Apple basket.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  That ... could be compelling. Aside from desktop (Firefox), much of my browsing now is on an e-ink tablet. I've found that an e-ink optimised browser, specifically EinkBro, is strongly preferable there. That browser has some features addressing Web annoyances (adblock, somewhat lackluster cookie and JS toggles), but does nothing against cookie pop-ups. A DDG browser with e-ink tuning might be interesting. EinkBro: <https://github.com/plateaukao/browser https://github.com/plateaukao/browser> Useful features: - Paginated navigation. This is based on touch regions rather than gestures. - Black-on-white mode. Forces a white background and enhances blacks in text. - A really nifty "save as e-pub" feature. More here: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107958709435468728 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/107958709435468728> - A ... not especially good reader-mode feature. (Better CSS styling w/ some margins would help a lot.) - Integrated adblock. - Good bookmarking for a mobile browser. <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/38e0c530966001391066002590d8e506 https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/38e0c53096600139106600...> As to why e-ink needs tuning: - Persistence is free. - Pixels are cheap. (Lots of them, very high DPI, 200--300+.) - Paints are expensive and slow --- draw power and even at high-performance, at best a few Hz. High-quality is more like 1 to 0.25 Hz. - Animated anything sucks. - Pagination hugely beats scroll. More: <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba8448a5b29e257 https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...>

SquareWheel 4y ago

Note that these prompts can also be disabled in your Google account settings. I find them very irritating so I've disabled it on all accounts I manage. https://www.howtogeek.com/735152/how-to-turn-off-the-sign-in-with-google-prompt-on-websites/ https://www.howtogeek.com/735152/how-to-turn-off-the-sign-in...

kramerger 4y ago
Doesn't that require you to be logged in with Google already?
- SquareWheel 4y ago
  Yes. If you're not logged in with Google, you won't get these prompts in the first place. edit: Some comments below suggesting this is mistaken. Sorry, I hadn't noticed that in the past.
  - kramerger 4y ago
    Don't you get the other one, about logging in with Google?
    - probably_wrong 4y ago
      Yes, you do.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Not true at all. Happens even in incognito/private windows.
    - giancarlostoro 4y ago
      Is this only whilst using Google Chrome? Cause technically most people on Chrome login to it
      - 4y ago

supriyo-biswas 4y ago

Unfortunately, I have to take the contrarian view and agree with some of the grayed out (presumably downvoted?) comments here that DDG's search featureset has stagnated and they're solely relying on the narrative of "Big Tech Bad!" to carry their brand and product forward. "Big Tech Bad!" isn't in of itself an issue and can be a viable marketing message for ad blockers, VPNs, and products in that space. However, I'm afraid the real innovation in search is happening elsewhere; either in the form of traditional search engines (Kagi, you.com) or large language models (ChatGPT, LaMDA etc.)

netr0ute 4y ago
> they're solely relying on the narrative of "Big Tech Bad!" to carry their brand and product forward. I don't know, that is kind of the whole purpose of DDG to begin with.
- supriyo-biswas 4y ago
  Every company can market themselves the way they want. I’m simply lamenting the choice that DDG has made, in the same way Steve Jobs lamented the marketing-heavy PepsiCo for a lack of attention towards their products.
yegg 4y ago
We have actually been continually working on improving our search results. We're working on a new page to detail major updates on a quarterly basis, which should be live in a few weeks. At the same time, we've been continuously developing our Web Tracking Protections for our browsers and extensions. We also made a page for that here that is already out: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/web-tracking-protections/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/we...
- notlukesky 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - 4y ago

ck2 4y ago

How long is DDG's contract with Bing? Amazing how far they've come just as a Bing proxy but if they are ever cut off, they will be gone overnight. BTW how do people know they truly are anonymous, has their code/connection to Bing ever been audited?

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
They weren't just a Bing proxy. They also mixed in Yandex results which were obvious when they were links to Russian language sites.
pessimizer 4y ago
I hate that one of the results of that arrangement is that 50% of news search results are the MSN version of articles posted elsewhere. Another 40% of the results are the Yahoo version of an article posted elsewhere; I assume that's not a Bing thing, but it's a bad thing.

gareth_untether 4y ago

Thank goodness, it is a terribly annoying pop up that reminded me of surfing the net a decade ago. What is Google thinking? Thanks to DuckDuckGo for a great upgrade.

lapcat 4y ago

div#credential_picker_container > iframe[src^="https://accounts.google.com/"], iframe#credential_picker_iframe[src^="https://accounts.google.com/"] { display: none !important; } That's all you need. Covers both desktop and mobile.

vorpalhex 4y ago
Thank you for this snippet. I hate those windows and they seem to always appear on the scammiest of sites.
DavideNL 4y ago
I wonder if there's (uBlock Origin) filter lists with only separate / specific things like this, which keeps up to date with latest updates/changes. There's `AdGuard Annoyances` and `Fanboy’s Annoyance` lists (which i assume also have this blocking rule), but these big lists frequently break things unfortunately, so i avoid them.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Does blocking elements through CSS prevent all traffic to the designated site, or only prevent it from displaying? I do this frequently simply because I find such elements visually annoying. I'd be all the happier if doing so also disabled tracking. I'm referring not only to iframe elements, but the whole slew of social-share link-litter that's so prevalent on websites now.
- DavideNL 4y ago
  > "Does blocking elements through CSS prevent all traffic to the designated site, or only prevent it from displaying?" That's a cosmetic filter. Look at 'Cosmetic filters' vs 'Network filters' [1] > "social-share link-litter" You can block these with a list like 'AdGuard Social Media' or 'Fanboy’s Social'. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Does-uBlock-Origin-block-ads-or-just-hide-them%3F https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Does-uBlock-Origin-bl...
  - dredmorbius 4y ago

we_never_see_it 4y ago

[dead]

somehnacct3757 4y ago

What content blockers do people use alongside Safari on iOS? I've been trying Firefox Focus but it's barebones, ad-centric, and doing nothing for cookie popups. Now with these Google popups infesting the web it feels like the 90s again and has made me stop browsing the web on my tablet.

bunnyfoofoo 4y ago
I’m using Wipr combined with NextDNS. It doesn’t block these by default, but I added the accounts.google.com domain to NextDNS.
foreverCarlos 4y ago
AdGuard Pro. It’s a paid (one-time fee) app that works almost as well as uBlock Origin on desktop.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
Wipr.
lazycouchpotato 4y ago
I've been using Orion browser for a while. It did not show the Google pop-up like Safari did. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id1484498200 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id148449...

charcircuit 4y ago

This just makes average user's lives harder in signing up for sites.

WASDx 4y ago
I assume it's just the pop-up that requests you to sign up that is blocked, not when you explicitly want to sign up.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  It's useful to inform users that they can easily sign up without having to go through a confusing account creation process and having to worry about the site's security
  - t-writescode 4y ago
    And yet Reddit asks me to sign in with Google, *even when I'm currently signed in with my Reddit account*. Yeah, no. It's almost always an anti-pattern that's designed to get someone's real identity through their gmail account
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      That sounds like a bug in reddit. Did you report it?
andybee 4y ago
Yeah, but giving all website interaction data to a company for "convenience" is exactly not how to make that easier. The logins and account information belong on the client side along with the person; and should be implemented fully on a client (with a separate encrypted backup strategy). The way this whole thing was implemented is so it can be abused.

archsurface 4y ago

Good riddance. I have zero tolerance for that obnoxious dark pattern.

solarkraft 4y ago

Nice, but I think this should be uBlock Origin's job.

musicale 4y ago

My dream web browser settings: √ Never autoplay anything; not even you(tube) √ Block slideovers, overlays, and modal popups √ No, I do not want to sign in with Google √ No, I don't want your stupid tracking cookies √ No, I don't want to sign up for any newsletters

gcanyon 4y ago
For me I'd add: √ No, I don't want alerts from you √ No, I don't want to give you my location