
DuckDuckGo Tests How Much People Care About Privacy - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/technology/duckduckgo-private-search.html
======
zapf
DDG is simply awesome. I like to see the world as it is, not as some
corporation thinks I like to see it as.

Also, as comments do point out. No point using DDG on Chrome. One has to
switch to FF - which is seriously fast enough for my daily needs, both on
ubuntu and android.

Finally, there's still two things we need to break free form tracking
services.

1\. A non google play store smart phone.

2\. Get off gmail.

I am failing on both of the above.

~~~
martin_a
> 2\. Get off gmail.

What keeps you sticking to this? I read this often and can only wonder why.

A TLD + 50 GB webspace costs you around 2 Euro/month here in Germany and you
have full control over your mail. I also find that it creates a sense of
importance and seriousnesses (like in "cares about his/her communication"), if
you use your own domain for mails. As long as it's not something like
"hello@cuntdestroyer69.mail", obviously.

Most automatic spam filters work quite well and can also be trained, if not
your client is doing the filtering. And some hosters also provide catch-all
addresses which are great for seeing who misuses your mail address.

All in all, I never understood the attractiveness of Gmail, when using your
own mail is so easy.

~~~
climb_stealth
Man, I have been struggling to find a good domain to use for months. I have a
custom domain already but don't use it for everything. Ideally, I would like
to have one that is

\- fairly short

\- .com

\- unambiguous when written with a pen on forms

\- easy to spell on the phone

It's the last 3 I find important for an official domain. gmail for example is
easy to mention on the phone as everyone knows it. I always have to repeat my
fastmail address 3 times and spell it out as people don't know it.

~~~
martin_a
I'm using a combination of three letters from my first and my last name. For
you it could be "cliste.com" (taken in this case), maybe this works with your
real name. This concept is also fairly easy to explain on the phone, at least
I found it to be.

But the .com space is probably more crowded than .de in my case, so you might
not find it so easy to get a nice URL.

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jen729w
> If you call up DuckDuckGo on the Chrome browser, for example, Google is
> still logging your search queries.

Surely not. A quick search (using Duck, obviously) gives me nothing. Anyone
know what this is about?

If true, Chrome—currently my 3rd fallback browser behind Safari and Firefox—is
being removed this afternoon.

~~~
jazzyjackson
In the sense that Chrome logs and syncs your browser history across all
devices logged into your account, the search queries are plaintext, so google
can probably read them.

Basically I left chrome when they made it annoying to use it without being
logged in to the browser (Why would I want to be logged into a web browser?)

~~~
brigandish
Why would you need to be logged in? I'd wager that logging in simply makes the
history available _to you_ across devices. Google knows which device made the
queries and knows you use the device, even without any further analysis it's a
good bet you made the search.

I use an application level firewall to block Chrome's outgoing connections and
it took a lot of effort to get the ruleset right, even now I'm not sure it is.

Which is why I use other browsers ;-)

~~~
cameronbrown
How did you block outgoing connections without breaking web browsing?

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brigandish
Trial and error. I got a list of Google's IP ranges (using something like the
technique in [1]) and input them into the app layer firewall and tried
browsing using Chrome and nothing broke, but that's because when I use Chrome
I don't browse to any Google sites.

I use uMatrix on my main browser and I'm well used to breaking sites, I
suppose it's increased my patience for refreshing pages until I find the magic
minimum for them to work.

I almost always have to turn off all kinds of blocking when doing a payment
though, especially anything involving redirects, like plane tickets.
Javascript is the biggest pain, IMO, next would be sites that use Recaptcha.

[1] [https://snurps.blogspot.com/2013/10/how-many-ip-addresses-
do...](https://snurps.blogspot.com/2013/10/how-many-ip-addresses-does-google-
have.html)

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ctulek
I am a DDG user for 4 years or so, and had very few quality problems. When I
am not happy with results, I check Google, too. Most of the time, though,
Google returns similar results.

~~~
izolate
I hope to get here. I've been using DDG since the start of the year, and I'm
thinking of switching back to Google. The results for me are off the mark to
such a degree that I use the `!g` more times than not. Even if DDG has the
result on the first page, it's never at the top like Google often is.

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jddj
Using DuckDuckGo is pleasant in ways that Google just isn't, but can be easy
to forget.

I'm reminded every time I somehow default to Google by mistake (using
different browser or PC, for example) and am hit with one of those "Before you
go!.. some bright colours and dark patterns which we hope will shield us from
GDPR" modals.*

It's just such a nice _break_ from what the internet has become, like booting
into Linux and simply not having that general feeling that everything you
touch is out to screw you somehow to squeeze just a little more value out of
the interaction.

No modals, no overlays, no cookie warnings, no needing to save cookies to
avoid cookie warnings which have already been acknowledged. So refreshing.

Their branding and message is so on-point that after a while of using their
search, a journey into chrome/Google feels almost seedy, like downloading a
"Best Free Calculator/Flashlight App" from the android play store, or browsing
sourceforge a few years ago.

*As a sidenote, I'd love to see the statistics of people who immediately stop and bounce to DDG when presented with one of those.

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jammygit
My wife ordered pizza today and less than a minute later I got an unusual ad
for panago pizza in YouTube. I’ve never seen a pizza ad before. I use a VPN
and she doesn’t, but it still figures out we live together and connected the
dots

~~~
andreareina
How is it correlating that two devices on different networks (as far as it can
see) are in the same house? I can understand device-level fingerprinting
associating device@vpn <-> device@office, but I'm not seeing where deviceA@vpn
<-> deviceB@home have anything in common to tie them together.

~~~
zaarn
Bluetooth. Device A and Device B can see eachother, occassionally throughout
the day, via bluetooth. An app using either the Google or Criteo Framework
records these and through knowing that one devices has VPN on, knows that it's
endpoint is likely not real and assigns the two devices together.

Even better, thanks to criteo's bluetooth beacon service, if you go to pick up
your pizza, they will know you bought it and can present you with further ads
from that specific pizza chain.

If you think Criteo isn't doing that, you should check out their marketing
material.

~~~
cameronbrown
A simpler explanation is both devices have location services on, or are on the
same WiFi network (same SSID).

~~~
zaarn
Criteo's framework relies on Bluetooth more than Wifi IIRC. They love telling
you about how accurate their bluetooth beacons are.

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olliej
My problem has been DDG consistently produces worse results than google for
many/most of my searches. It's often sufficient, but often it is so bad I have
to redo the search in google :-/

I really want to use DDG over google, but it's just not there for me yet.

~~~
bollockitis
I’ve been using DSG exclusively for about a year now and I've had the opposite
experience: I've been amazed at how relevant the results have been.
Occasionally, when struggling to find something, I'll use Google (via !g) and
the results are, more often than not, mostly the same. It's rare for me to use
Google search these days and when I do I'm annoyed by the assumptions it makes
about my queries.

~~~
OrwellianChild
Fellow DDG user, but your observation about Google Searches is interesting...
It may be the case that your limited use of Google is contributing to the poor
assumptions it makes about your queries. The more Google tracks you, the
better it can anticipate your intent.

Of course this is at the expense of privacy, filter bubble, etc. Still funny
to think that Google may be over-optimizing around the presumption of an
available browsing history. If true, Google could very well be degrading the
anonymized experience on its sites. Could backfire in a more privacy-conscious
future...

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bookofjoe
OT (but not really): putting DDG into Google Image Search first shows
DuckDuckGo about 2/3 of the way down the page:
[https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sou...](https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1487&bih=1018&ei=xcktXcyaCoH_5gKR1gY&q=DDG+logo&oq=DDG+logo&gs_l=img.3..0j0i5i30.1107.3122..3435...0.0..0.260.1272.2j6j1......0....1..gws-
wiz-img.....0..35i39j0i30j0i24.Baujs_TmX2U)

Putting DDG into DDG Image Search yields nothing but pictures of U.S.N.
destroyers:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=DDG&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images&iai=...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=DDG&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2Ff%2Ff3%2FUSS_Barry_DDG52.jpg%2F1200px-
USS_Barry_DDG52.jpg)

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bifrost
I've loved DDG forever, used it since 2010 I think.

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badrabbit
A while ago, i needed to search something from the cli with w3m, ddg wouldn't
work without JS so I had to use google.

That commentary aside, search engines make a big chunk of their revenue on
prioritizing results and making sure the search term is relevant. Why can't
the index be exposed as an api to allow arbitrary front ends?

~~~
class4behavior
>A while ago, i needed to search something from the cli with w3m, ddg wouldn't
work without JS so I had to use google.

[https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
pages/features/n...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
pages/features/non-javascript/)

~~~
badrabbit
Thanks!

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kmlx
my situation: i would like to move on from google but can't.

1\. google maps is my number 1 maps app. i post reviews, i search for
restaurants, i book hotels. basically gmaps is my gateway to the real world.

2\. gmail is my number 1 email app. i've got over 10 accounts in there, both
corporate and personal. custom labels, filters and haven't gotten spam in a
decade.

2\. google search still produces the best results. this is because of them
knowing everything about me. DDG on the other hand produces horrible results
for me; they don't do tracking so it doesn't know anything about me. and i
need them to have context.

3\. Firefox on macos is... not good to say the least. especially compared to
chrome on macos.

any ideas on this? are there any proper blows-your-mind kind of alternatives
or am I stuck?

~~~
zip6
For search, perhaps you just need to spend a little while with DuckDuckGo to
learn what you need to type in to get the results you are looking for. If you
stay logged into Google, then when you can't find what you're looking for on
DDG, add !g to your query and it'll take you to Google. The point is you can
switch gradually.

~~~
kmlx
that's a very good suggestion. thank you!

