
DuckDuckGo moves beyond search to also protect you while browsing - brisance
https://spreadprivacy.com/privacy-simplified/
======
prepend
Google started this really annoying habit of including results that don’t have
the words you are searching. You can get around this by including the word in
quotes but it’s frustrating to spend a few minutes looking items returned by
Google to not find what you’re looking for to realize they showed it to you
even though it didn’t have your search terms.

I bet this is great for current events like “when is Star Wars 1 playing” when
the person probably meant Star Wars 8. But sucks when researching items or
searching for a paper or particular product.

I started using Duck Duck Go and it works great. The privacy is an added
bonus.

~~~
mattlondon
I use DDG all the time now for personal use, but I still use Google at work.

Try this one weird trick to get only what you searched for on Google:

Click on the "Tools" link (under the search box) and change "All results" to
"Verbatim" and I _think_ (I dont _know_ for sure) that this will only search
for exactly what you typed.

~~~
srathi
Yes. But then you can't filter by time range. In their infinite wisdom, Google
has made it either-or. Either I can filter by time, or by verbatim. It drives
me nuts!

~~~
Unkechaug
Seriously? This would be a deal breaker for me. It would also be nice to be
able to save preferences so that I only ever get results from the past year
unless I specify otherwise. It just takes additional clicks and is a big pain
from the search engine that's supposed to be user friendly.

~~~
tudorw
Google is a sitting duck for innovation, why does it not suggest scopes for
search (paris = person / place), or show me a graph of results over time, or
let me exclude pages with X% similarity and show me the most likely original
source, there is so much room for improvement, exciting times...

------
01001010
This is great! I have been waiting for an extension such as this which: (1) is
seamless, (2) doesn't break the web, (3) doesn't require too much tweaking,
and (4) is offered by a company I trust. Mainly in order to install on
friends' and family's devices who aren't tech savvy – this appears to be
exactly that. Thank you. Love the UX (sans below), nice touch integrating with
ToS;DR.

Feedback: The "enhanced from X to Y" is not perfectly clear to me. I'm
guessing you're saying "we were able to upgrade the rating to Y from X".
Correct? The badge seems to be showing the upgraded rating rather than the
"actual" rating – this is not what I expected. I expected to see the privacy
grade of said website, not the grade received by blocking scripts and/or
redirecting to https.

Question: Will the extension for Safari be available from the Safari
Extensions Gallery[1]? This would be even better, avoiding (said friends and
family) having to "Trust" the safariextz and get the disclaimer that it isn't
from the gallery. (I currently only see your old search extension in the
gallery, will they, perhaps, be merged?)

[1]: [https://safari-extensions.apple.com/?q=duckduckgo](https://safari-
extensions.apple.com/?q=duckduckgo)

~~~
eridius
Not only will putting it in the gallery avoid having to "trust" it but it will
also allow the extension to auto-update.

~~~
yegg
Yes, we are trying to update the extensions gallery as we speak.

------
figers
Use DuckDuckGo every day, but wish it had a date range of one year as a search
filter like google, needed for programming searches where the landscape
changes rapidly...

~~~
yegg
This has been a long-term struggle to get right, though I really see the light
at the end of the tunnel and think it may come sometime this year, hopefully
sooner than later.

For others who may not know though, we do have last month -- drop down above
results.

~~~
pweissbrod
I just wanted to take a moment and write my appreciation for your fantastic
work. Services such as duckduckgo are needed now more than ever. The fact that
it is stable and responsive enough for me to depend on it 100% every work day
is amazing

------
KozmoNau7
I applaud the initiative, but how does the Firefox extension differ from
Privacy Badger or Disconnect?

Does the extension learn trackers as it goes, like Privacy Badger? What does
it offer over something like uBlock Origin with the appropriate tracking
blocklists?

Also in Firefox, I now have two "Search DuckDuckGo" entries in the right click
menu, one from being the default search engine, and one (with an icon) from
the extension. They do the exact same thing, so why have them both?

~~~
yegg
We're trying to put all the privacy essentials we can make seamless -- tracker
blocking, upgraded encryption, private search and more to come -- all in one
package, across all major browsers and platforms. In this respect, on any
major mobile device or desktop browser, you should be able to look up
DuckDuckGo and with one download get seamless privacy protection as you search
and browse the web.

With regards to other extensions, we found that they generally lack some
combination of all the essentials (e.g. missing encryption, private search),
aren't totally seamless (i.e. break some of the web), or aren't available
across all major browsers and platforms.

With regards to tracker blocking in particular, we would like to be as
comprehensive as possible while not breaking the Web, and are close to that
with this initial launch, utilizing some open source lists including
Disconnect and Easylist. We are not currently using the machine learning
aspects of Privacy Badger, however.

There are more nuanced UX differences, however. In the UI we're trying to move
away from 'x trackers blocked' and instead group trackers from networks
together, trying to identify the umbrella company and purposes.

Second, we're grading each site based on its privacy measures (including
privacy policies with help from TOSDR), and telling you at a glance how
protected you are on an A-F scale, based on what we could do (e.g. block
trackers and upgrade encryption).

Thank you for the feedback on the right-click menu. We will look into that.

~~~
pknight
One privacy essential is a built-in vpn/proxy like Opera has done with its
browser, this makes it slightly harder for some fingerprinting ad trackers to
follow a user around.

~~~
kijin
Proxies can be useful, but I'm not comfortable with sending all my traffic
over a centralized proxy operated by a single entity. Just like Cloudflare,
the entity that runs the proxy gets a free pass to MITM everyone!

A decentralized solution that can be easily configured to send traffic over
any third-party VPN service, HTTP proxy, or ssh tunnel would be much cleaner.
Bonus points if the proxy seamlessly kicks in only when visiting a site with a
low privacy score or when browsing on public Wi-Fi.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
In fairness, with https it's less of a mitm opportunity... Still an issue,
though.

------
seba_dos1
Let me use this thread to lazily look for simple advice.

For privacy, I'm now using: DuckDuckGo Plus, First Party Isolation, Smart
Referer, HTTPS Everywhere, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Canvas Defender and
Decentraleyes. There's also NoScript installed, but disabled (waiting for its
clickjacking protection to return in WebExt version, although I might switch
back to whitelisting JS sometime). Plus there's also Firefox's Tracking
Protection enabled all the time.

Anything worth adding? Anything that can be removed for sure, cause it just
duplicates something else from this list? Anything should be replaced? (if
yes, then why?)

~~~
KozmoNau7
Instead of Noscript, use uBlock Origin in dynamic mode:
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-
filtering](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering)

~~~
seba_dos1
ClearClick is what I'm interested in, not script blocking, at least right now.
WebExt version doesn't have it now, but I'm keeping it installed, so it just
upgrades when it's added back.

~~~
my_ghola
Firefox bypasses right-click blocking when you press shift.

What it doesn't bypass is websites placing transparent things on top of what
you wish to right-click on (for example images on Twitter). For that I use
Stylus to add CSS and move things away.

~~~
seba_dos1
It's not about right-click bypassing, it's exactly about transparent things.
ClearClick checks whether the image of what you click matches the image of
element that's being clicked, shows you the preview and asks if you really
want to click it. The best pre-WebExt feature of NoScript.

------
mattferderer
If you're interested in this, I suggest the new web browser Brave. It does a
great job of cleaning up all the ads & protecting your privacy. I also haven't
ran into sites that block me yet like I do when using an ad blocker on Chrome.
You can choose the search engine you want to use unlike this extension. It's
also built on top of the same code as Chrome so you get all those benefits as
well. Brendan Eich (JavaScript & Mozilla) is the CEO.

Slightly off topic, Brave also has an interesting feature as well to help
support content creators. Since a lot of content creators rely on ads, you
have the ability to add a small amount of funds to a crypto wallet that Brave
can use which get distributed to the websites you visit the most over the
month. You can enable or disable this for specific websites as well. I think
this is a great idea but it may have a hard time catching on. I think people
will have a hard time adding money to a virtual wallet to pay for something
they "think" they are already getting for free. At the same time I love the
concept as it is a way for you to reward people for good content & create a
disincentive for bad content.

~~~
chiefalchemist
How about a simply browser extension that let's you donate to page / site X?
This would also be great on GitHub and GitLab.

You could buy credits in bulk so the credit card transaction fee only happens
once. And then, if the page has an account, dole out those credits as you
surf.

Probably not massive amounts of money but better than the ads based model. At
least there would be a option.

~~~
djsumdog
There have been attempts to do this. Flattr and Patreon come to mind. I
currently actively support a few people on Patreon.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Both are close, but not what I'm looking for. I want...a browser
extension...that recognizes (via code on that page) a site/page that's
registered within the network...the extension icon turns green to let me
know...I click the icon...the dropdown shows me my current number of
credits...and let's me donate to the current site...

The site doesn't pay anything to be in the network (sans maybe a low sign up
fee to mitigate spam). The members pay, tho' I'd have to think about that
model.

What I want is semi similar to an old school PayPal button but more micropay
friendly (low cost) and is more (social) network-centric.

No can do?

p.s. FWIW this is something I imagine say GitHub doing for starters and then
branching out from there.

------
philg_jr
DDG as a search engine is just good. Its been my default for a long time. I
wish Mozilla would make it the default so more users could be introduced to
it. Why hasn't this happened yet?

~~~
janlaureys
I tend to agree, but at least a few times a day have to resort to using !g to
actually find a decent result. It's usually Angular/Symfony related but just
last week I couldn't find the website of my local tennis club at all, not even
by exact name. On google it was the first result...

~~~
tannhaeuser
The answer I suppose is almost always found on stackoverflow.com anyway, so
why not go to SO search directly? Because SO search isn't up to it of course.

Why don't they improve their search system? I think they're really leaving
money on the table, or maybe it's a job for a third-party SO search app for a
fellow HNer (not that there aren't already enough SO scrapers showing up in
searches).

------
nukeop
I'm using DuckDuckGo every day, but I wish DuckDuckHack was easier to
contribute to. Maybe something like letting users load their own modules for
local use, and public repositories? I'd like to help improve instant answers
and widgets (like json pretty print).

~~~
r3bl
It wasn't really difficult to contribute to them about a year or two ago. I've
contributed a couple of cheatsheets (for example, clicking on the info icon
when searching for "nmap cheatsheet" will reveal my GitHub username), which
were, at the time, considered a low-hanging fruit way of contributing instant
answers.

Later on, I was later on added to the DuckDuckHack Contributors team[0], which
was border-line spamming, up to the point where I had to redirect email
notifications from the DuckDuckGo organization to my non-primary email
address. Occasional email is fine, a dozen or two dozens of emails in my inbox
almost every single day was not.

And finally, I am aware that there was some grand change about how people
contribute to DuckDuckGo introduced relatively recently, which makes my
experience a bit outdated.

The combination of their actions _after_ I've contributed to them made me
pretty uninterested in the idea of contributing more instant answers.
Nowadays, I only suggest bangs from time to time, which is as easy as filling
out a form[1].

[0] [https://github.com/orgs/duckduckgo/teams/duckduckhack-
contri...](https://github.com/orgs/duckduckgo/teams/duckduckhack-contributors)

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/newbang](https://duckduckgo.com/newbang)

~~~
yegg
Sorry about the experience you had with the org. DuckDuckHack is indeed in
maintenance mode right now as we couldn't figure out the best contribution
model that scaled with the search engine, though are still thinking about how
to do that.

All of these new apps and extensions are open source though, and we'd welcome
any contributions.

------
mlinksva
Are the apps and browser extensions 100% open source? I didn't notice anything
in the text, but _maybe_ [https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy-
extension](https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy-extension)
[https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android](https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android)
[https://github.com/duckduckgo/iOS](https://github.com/duckduckgo/iOS) have
the complete source code?

~~~
yegg
Yes they are all completely open source.

------
TimMurnaghan
Are people mostly positive about this? I was already using DDG - then I get an
unexpected pop up asking for permission to rewrite everything. I think we
should develop a reflex to routinely refuse to give popups permission - so now
I've lost DDG in the search bar.

I would much rather that it stayed as a non-evil search provider rather than
bundling ABP/Ghostery. Maybe I'm in a minority wanting separation of concerns?

Or maybe it really is better than ABP and Ghostery and I've missed it by being
put off by the delivery mechanism?

~~~
yegg
I'm sorry for putting you off. The intention is to have all the privacy
essentials in one package, and make those essentials each best in class. Over
the coming months we will explain more about how we're doing so and why we
think that is the case. Right now though know that it is doing more than just
tracker blocking and private search: it is also upgrading encryption where
possible and exposing poor privacy practices when known.

In any case though, I understand if you feel you are covered with other
extensions and just want search. In that case, you don't really need a
DuckDuckGo extension and can set the search via these instructions:
[https://duckduckgo.com/install](https://duckduckgo.com/install)

~~~
nedt
I'd still be nice if the omnibox search can be changed. That's the reason I've
removed the extension after 15 minutes. I have my own search service with a
couple of keywords I need all the time. The fallback/default search is ddg
anyway.

------
iandanforth
Edit - Chrome only issue for which the devs don't have good options.

I was very disappointed to discover that the app _forces_ you to use DDG for
search. In Chrome there doesn't appear to be a way to use Google as your
default search engine while the extension is active. I like its other features
but Google search IMO is _much much_ better than DDG and don't want to be
forced to switch.

~~~
yegg
This is unfortunately the way Chrome works right now. If you revert search
settings they disable the whole extension. We are actively trying to find a
way around this behavior.

~~~
salvar
Is there a way to get the website rating functionality without being forced to
use DDG as a default search provider?

~~~
yegg
I don't think so in Chrome, no, though we are actively trying to find a way
short of forking the extension, and if anyone has any ideas, please feel free
to reach out to me.

However, we do suggest generally to switch browsers if privacy is a primary
concern. We recommend and use ourselves a number of good browsers: Firefox,
Safari, Brave, and Vivaldi among them.

------
dwg
Improving privacy is great, but I find the extreme approach to erase all
history taken by DuckDuckGo and others make them difficult to adopt.

I often use the history feature to re-find sites I remember visiting before.
Bookmarks don't solve this problem because even if I tried to remember to
bookmark anything that might be important later, I wouldn't be able to nor
would I always be able to make that judgement accurately.

So, what I like to have instead of the nuclear option (erase all history) is a
browser that protects my identity but also my history (e.g. behind a locked
gate) that I can use always without having to think about so I don't have to
choose between privacy or history.

------
JeanMarcS
I like the grade system. Sometimes I’m amazed to see the number on my uBlock
icon skyrocketing.

It’s cool to know where not to go if you can avoid it

~~~
akerro
>uBlock icon skyrocketing.

Some sites have 100s of fallback ads and trackers (usually just domains and
subdomains), once tracker 1 failed to load, it tries to load 2 which is the
same file on a server, but with different URL. They have literally 100s or
1000s of such fallback URLs.

~~~
nerdponx
I'm just grateful that they still serve ads over separate domains, instead of
rigging up the ad tech on the server side and embedding tracking into the
"functional" Javascript.

I get more worried that once Wasm hits, the only way to tell if you're being
tracked will be to monitor individual HTTP requests, which even then might
become impossible if everything is sent to and from opaque CDN domains.

I imagine the only thing currently standing between us and this nightmare is
that people don't want to actually work with any tracking on the backend;
easier to embed it in the front-end and let the vendor put whatever they want
in the script and serve all the requests.

~~~
dx034
Only a matter of time until Cloudflare starts offering ads. They can embed
them at the edge with no/minimal JS and links/image files of the host domain.

------
titanomachy
I was curious about the "fake" site they used in their example,
creepysite.com. I was pretty surprised to find that it redirects to google.com
by an HTTP 302 redirect.

Good marketing for duckduckgo.

------
edraferi
Very interesting.

I wonder how DDG's new privacy tools compare to uBlock and Brave.

The Terms of Service; Didn't Read [0] project is super cool. Looks like their
information is a bit dated though. Hopefully teaming with DDG will give them a
boost.

[0] [https://tosdr.org/index.html](https://tosdr.org/index.html)

------
batat
Ukraine region not available any more: while "ua-uk" URL parameter is still
mentioned on search params page[1], it's not working. I didn't get the answers
on DDG forum (now closed in favor of reddit), neither on /r/duckduckgo. I
suspect this could be connected somehow to Yandex block. Anyway, currently
can't use DDG for local search, sad :(

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/params](https://duckduckgo.com/params)

------
phillipcarter
Just came here to say that I’ve been using duckduckgo for the past year and
absolutely love it. Keep up the wonderful work.

~~~
yegg
Thank you so much! We really appreciate the support and are glad that you're
enjoying the search experience. This announcement should give you more privacy
protection when you leave our search results pages.

~~~
z_open
I notice AdNauseam blocks your adds even when I have it set to allow non-
tracking ads. What sort precautions does DDG do to protect users who use your
ads?

~~~
yegg
Our entire search results page is anonymous at page load, and our ads are non-
tracking in the sense that they are just based on that one search page request
and have nothing to do with any other personal information (as we don't have
any). It's unfortunate that adblockers are blocking our ads, but I understand
that our more privacy-aware ads are extremely rare.

------
pmoriarty
I'm concerned that I'd be handing over data about my browsing habits to DDG
and its partners in order to use some of the features described in the
article:

\- The Privacy Grade rating (A-F) when visiting a website.

\- Scoring of websites in terms of service and privacy, by partnering with
Terms of Service Didn't Read.

I'm not sure how these services can be provided by DDG and its partners
without them knowing which websites I'm browsing to.

IMO, it's none of their business, even if they promise not to keep the data or
give/sell it to anyone -- a promise which is not verified by any trusted third
party, as far as I know.

~~~
yegg
All of this calculation happens on your device, and is not handed over to us.
Additionally, our privacy policy is to not store or collect any personal
information at all:
[https://duckduckgo.com/privacy](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy)

~~~
pmoriarty
How can I be sure that DDG is actually following its own privacy policies?

~~~
yegg
Our privacy policy is extremely strict, and is the basis for our company. If
we are to be found violating it at all, we would be ruined, and would probably
be criminally liable.

In addition, a lot of what we do, including this new app and extension is open
source so the code can be examined.

------
Flow
Installed the iOS app and figured they would offer a content blocker for iOS
Safari, just like Firefox Focus do. But their app didn't offer any.

Let's hope they do in the future.

~~~
yegg
We're working on that. Because the content blocking mechanism doesn't offer
fine-grained controls, we couldn't make it seamless and still block the things
we think should be blocked -- like Google Analytics.

~~~
saagarjha
> Because the content blocking mechanism doesn't offer fine-grained controls,
> we couldn't make it seamless and still block the things we think should be
> blocked -- like Google Analytics.

Just curious, what about the Content Blocking API makes this impossible? I was
under the impression that you could block JavaScript from the rule list.

~~~
yegg
Some google analytics code is embedded into buttons that are essential for the
Web site to operate, so if you block them then the website will cease
functioning properly. To get around that, we still block it, but insert some
inert code in its place that will make the button function again properly.
This nuanced replacement is not available through the API -- it's more all or
nothing.

------
altern8tif
@yegg, is DuckDuckHack coming back?

That was one of my first forays into open source and was hoping that there is
more that I (and the community) can do to help improve DDG further.

~~~
yegg
We are trying to find ways to make that work. Right now though, all of these
apps and extensions are open source, and we would welcome contributions.

------
Nelkins
What is the advantage of this over Firefox Focus? And is the Privacy
Essentials extension available for Firefox for Android? Trying to understand
why I should use the DDG app over either of those two, since the DDG app seems
like it is just a browser without tab functionality.

Also, not really related, but does anybody know how to make the home screen
search bar on Nexus/Pixel phones use DDG instead of Google?

~~~
yegg
Tab functionality should be coming shortly, along with other standard browser
functionality -- feel free to influence the roadmap with more suggestions :).

It is not available yet for Firefox for Android, though we would like to make
it so shortly.

Our app additionally includes a few things:

\--Upgraded encryption, in that if we can determine a site works on an
encrypted version, we will also send you there automatically.

\--Privacy grading, in that we show you at a glance how protected you are,
which you can tap to dig into the details. We have more to do, though we've
spent a long time trying to make this UX intuitive and informative, including
an A-F grading scheme, grouping trackers by networks, and showing you over
time who we caught trying to track you.

\--Special attention given to blocking while at the same time not breaking the
Web.

~~~
minkiu
Hi, thanks for all you guys do at DDG.

I was wondering if the app will get the "Open Link in Browser" option?

I tend to search with DDG and when I find what I want, open it in FF and keep
it there. (I noticed the Bookmark bit).

Cheers!

~~~
yegg
Thanks for the suggestion -- duly noted.

------
benwilber0
I've been using DuckDuckGo for a few months since I switched to the new
Firefox. It's generally OK but I can tell that the results are just ever so
slightly worse than Google. I get irrelevant results and old results. It's
just obviously not nearly as smart and that's probably because it doesn't know
as much about me as Google does.

~~~
bambataa
DDG is usually good enough but I do find myself dropping back to Google for
some searches (easy enough with !g).

It does make clear how tailored Google searches are to the user. For example,
when I search for programming terms that have non-programming meanings
(library names etc) I get a much more diverse list. Google pretty much
exclusively only shows me programming-related results. With DDG I need to add
my location to the search rather than relying on Google knowing my exact
address.

I do find DDG location search very annoying as clicking on a map result always
tries to open it in the Maps application, which I don't want.

------
rapnie
what i _really_ dislike from Google is how they offer downgraded UI's to non-
Chrome browsers like firefox on android.

so no 'tools' to specify filters, and no 'Related images' in image search.

i looked why this was and its apparently intentional. brr.. evil :)

------
LeoPanthera
This gives my (personal) site a "B", but literally the only thing it "fails"
is that it doesn't have a privacy policy listed at the (third party) site
"ToS;DR".

My site is a personal site, doesn't have logins, and doesn't even have any
Javascript, so I think the "B" is a little misleading.

(Side note: Amusingly, if you go to [https://tosdr.org](https://tosdr.org)
with the plugin installed, they also fail for apparently not having a privacy
policy listed on their own site. Also it says in a very large font that their
ratings are outdated, so I really don't know how useful this is.)

~~~
yegg
We don't feel we can give anything an "A" until TOSDR vets the privacy policy,
and unfortunately they don't have a ton of sites vetted yet. However, we are
committed to working with them to dramatically increase the number of sites
rated.

------
BadassFractal
How does this differ from Disconnect or Ghostery?

~~~
piyush_soni
I came to ask the same question. Have been using 'Blur' [0] extension for the
same (After hearing Ghostery is actually by an advertizing company).

[0] : [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/donottrackplu...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/donottrackplus/)

~~~
Arnt
It isn't really.

Ghostery makes/made its money selling things like a report on what advertising
ends up being on your site, which you as site owner might quite reasonably
want to know. (Advertising space is sold and resold at dizzying speed.)

IIRC Ghostery recently sold itself to Cliqz, which in turn is owned by Burda,
a publishing conglomerate. Mozilla owns a bit too.

~~~
piyush_soni
Yes, looks like they are now owned by some other company. Previously, one of
many references [1] said this, which really smells fishy to me(Now not sure if
the article itself is wrong):

 _" Ghostery is owned by Evidon, a company that collects and provides data to
advertising companies. It has a feature called GhostRank that you can check to
"support" them. The problem is, Ghostery blocks sites from gathering personal
information on you—but Ghostrank will take note the ads you encounter and
which ones you block, and sends that information back to advertisers so they
can better formulate their ads to avoid being blocked. The data is anonymous,
and Ghostery still does everything it promises to do to protect your
privacy."_

[1] : [https://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-
actual...](https://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actually-
sells-data-to-a-514417864)

~~~
fencepost
Seems logical - if you're an advertising company or an organized group of
advertising companies and you _know_ that people are going to be doing ad-
blocking or at least tracker-blocking, if you can provide a tool that's 90% of
the way there which also gets you metrics, etc. then at least you get that
little bit of data and the existence of a "good enough" option may also delay
stronger measures implemented by someone else.

~~~
Arnt
That assumes that ghostery users block some ads, not all.

Try this alternative: The reports sold by ghostery tell example.com the link
targets and reseller chains for each ad on its site, so it can keep away the
ads for herbal viagra or fake gucci clothes. (Ad space is often sold through
resellers, I've seen five-reseller chains myself and have heard stories about
longer ones.)

------
mattlondon
Generally I am positive about this but I'd have to give some feedback that tag
containers/managers are not automatically bad.

At the moment it seems like this tool just flags tag containers (e.g.
tagcommander, google tag manager) as a "tracker network" which they are not.
Of course, a tag container might contain tracking beacons and tags etc but
they might also contain benign other scripts (e.g. for A/B testing).

I would prefer it if these sorts of tools blacklisted the tags _inside_ the
container (they are just loaded via ajax like everything else), rather than
the containers themselves.

------
benp84
This is blocking Google Analytics, Facebook Connect and New Relic on my site.
How would DuckDuckGo prefer that startups measure traffic, ad ROI and site
performance? What's the "right" way?

~~~
tombrossman
The "right" way is to accept that privacy-conscious visitors reject your use
of third-party tracking, and if you really need to track their visits you must
use a first-party tool (Piwik, GoAccess, plain old logfile parsing...). It may
not seem fair and it may be frustrating, but blocking third-party tracking is
just so easy and anyone who cares about privacy can do it with minimal effort.

As a side benefit, when you start doing your own tracking from server logs,
you gain valuable insight into where the gaps in data are from the third-party
trackers, and precisely how many visitors are under counted.

~~~
benp84
You're right that third-party trackers aren't that reliable, and I do my own
log analytics for the easy/important stuff, but I'm not about to roll my own
New Relic.

This also seems bad for early-stage startups, where developer time is severely
limited.

~~~
quadrangle
Early stage startups could simply _skip_ all the analytics and do more
qualitative UX research with smaller numbers of people they actually interact
with in a human way and use large stats for things that actually matter like
sales and revenue etc.

The whole idea that you need all the analytics is at least overblown and
suffers from the streetlight effect.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect)

------
jnordwick
I miss Alta Vista and all the operators you could add to your queries.

------
latexr
My biggest frustration with search engines is that certain websites I consider
bad are common in results. These include sites that require a login to use
properly (Pinterest and Quora) as well as websites that are known to have
wrong information (W3Schools).

What I’d like to have is an option in my search engine (ideally that would not
require a login) to always exclude certain domains from results.

That would improve my browsing experience more than any other feature.
Blocking trackers is something others are already doing well.

------
Zhyl
I see that the DuckDuckGo app is retiring stories. I am sad about this as I
really liked the mix of articles it would provide.

@yegg, any chance of a stories-only spin-off app?

~~~
yegg
I actually made that stories feed originally for myself, before DuckDuckGo
even existed. As I still rely on it, I ported it personally to
[https://twitter.com/watrcoolr](https://twitter.com/watrcoolr)

~~~
Zhyl
This makes me happy! Watrcoolr.us (linked in the bio) seems to be a parked
domain though, just as a heads up.

~~~
yegg
Ahh, I'll delete that -- used to be where it was ages ago.

------
a_c
To prevent suffering from tyranny of small decisions[1], I want to support
duckduckgo, financially and technically. Do they take donation? Or do they
have an open sets of challenge to work on? Would love to help.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_small_decisions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_small_decisions)

------
Tepix
I don't like the fact that the browser combines the search bar and the address
bar.

It means that when I enter a URL character by character, the search engine
will know where I am going next even thought I didn't need the assistance of a
search engine in the first place.

A "privacy first" browser can do better in this regard.

------
mk89
Duckduckgo improved drastically over the last 6-7 years. I have no idea how
they did it, but they did a great job.

------
dwg
Very cool... Some areas for improvement I noticed off the bat while using the
app:

* Scrolling sometimes feels slow.

* Doesn't seem to work with 1 password autofill. Not sure if 1password, DuckDuckGo, or both are needed to address this.

* Would be nice to be able to use Google as a search engine (though I admit I could just go to google.com first).

~~~
__blockcipher__
With DDG you should be able to use !bangs.

example: "!g my google query"

------
kevlar1818
This isn't really a big deal, but the features they are touting as new "today"
have been in the FF version of the extension for at least the month or so I've
had it installed. I'm honestly curious if I'm missing something or not.

~~~
yegg
We had to soft-launch early in Firefox because of the change in Firefox 57 of
how extensions work, though were still getting out the kinks and preparing it
for the rest of the platforms.

------
pablo-massa
To block trackers I use Brave on my phone and Chrome + uBlock Origin on
desktop.

I just checked this extensions and seems that they put a lot of attention on
UX, I loved it and is all in one product, I like the vision of DDG.

Someone knows if the blocking part is as good as uBlock and Brave?

------
godelski
Kind of interesting seeing some of the ratings. Like Mozilla and HN have a B
because of unknown privacy practices. Both these websites are fairly old, and
it seems odd to me that the privacy practices of Mozilla are unknown.

------
azag0
How does the Safari extension play with the native content blockers like
1blocker? Is this supported? I noticed that with 1blocker enabled, the initial
grade is usually higher than what it would be without 1blocker.

------
dumbfounder
Maybe it's just a semantic argument because I am a search engine developer,
but I wouldn't really call DDG a "search engine". It uses Bing to power
results. I would describe it as a "search interface" that gives you advanced
search related tools in addition to standard search, some stratified results,
and then it takes a privacy angle to differentiate itself. As such, I think
the move to browser safety is a natural extension of what they do.

That said, how the heck do they make money? I only very rarely see a single
ad, and there isn't much money in NOT tracking people. It's very hard to make
money on search if you aren't Google (I would know, I have tried several
times).

~~~
huphtur
Amazon Associates is one way DDG monetizes. Not sure how much revenue that
brings in, but would love to see some stats on this.

~~~
dumbfounder
I didn't think that was kosher as it incentivizes them to prioritize results
from Amazon.

~~~
yegg
Here's some more details on how we make money:
[https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-
affiliates](https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates)

Short answer is we're profitable since 2014 primarily with non-tracking search
ads based on the keyword (type in car and get a car ad). While we don't serve
that many ads, these are still lucrative enough to pay all the bills.

The affiliate portion is quite small now, and we do not change any rankings
based on them.

------
Taylor_OD
Is it worth the switching costs of going from google to duckduckgo?

~~~
macintux
One of the many nice features of DDG is that you can fall back to Google
searches trivially enough by adding a "!g" at the front of your search
results. The bang syntax also works for directing searches to YouTube,
Wikipedia, etc.

I value my privacy, so the few times I have to redirect a search to Google is
a small price to pay. Definitely recommend making the switch.

(Of course, if Google already knows everything about you, you'll probably find
their results much better tuned for you, so YMMV. I was quite amused and
pleased when all the suggested search completions for—IIRC—"git" in a recent
DDG search were completely irrelevant to me.)

~~~
cpeterso
You can also use "!sp" to get Google search results anonymized by
startpage.com.

------
djhworld
I use a pi-hole on my network so I think that achieves most of the things this
extension offers (minus the site rating thing)

I use DDG as my main search engine though, and will continue to do so.

------
jacksmith21006
Choice is good. Big fan of Google and use a lot as super curious person but if
does not work for you good there are other choices that work for your needs.

------
User_424
Here is a list of G operators [https://goo.gl/jYQk2t](https://goo.gl/jYQk2t)

------
TheCoreh
Won't using ToS;DR alienate smaller services that are not listed there? I only
see reasonably big sites on their site.

~~~
yegg
The hope is to work with them and their process in such a way that we can
dramatically increase the number of sites rated.

------
sixothree
I really do like the design of the post-install splash page. The vista scene
reminds me of the firefox post install page.

------
anttharj
I installed DuckDuckGo on my android in order to have a DuckDuckGo search
widget and now it's replaced with a laggy browser.

smh

------
vinny_36
moving to DDG right now. and it's done

------
tomxor
creepysite.com

... used in their screenshot as an example, so funny that creepysite.com
actually does redirect to google.com :D

------
nunobrito
Very happy to see the improvements. Personally I stopped feeling comfortable
on using search engines across the Atlantic since about a decade.

In case you'd be living around Europe, [http://qwant.com](http://qwant.com) is
picking up the pace here as a search engine focused on privacy-aware users.

As an engineer, the service is answering quite well to my queries related to
software.

------
tuxracer
Is the TOSDR data included with the add-on and referenced offline or is every
URL being sent to TOSDR?

------
SubiculumCode
Was there any truth to the Russia-DDG connection rumor going around the
internet a few years back?

~~~
djsumdog
Well DDG does buy indexes/data from Yandex for search, if that's what you're
referring to.

------
Accacin
At the moment I use uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, NoScript. Can this addon
replace all of these?

~~~
aorth
Don't you worry that your extensions are fighting each other? I only use
uBlock Origin.

------
xkarga00
Does the DDG addon replace other addons like HTTPSEverywhere or uBlock?

------
granda
Can't use 1Password on the iOS app. Deal breaker.

------
Raphmedia
Whenever I try to put back the search engine that I use as Chrome toolbar
search engine it uninstall the app.

Edit: Quick support made me change my wording to a less passive aggressive
one.

~~~
yegg
Can you please elaborate as to the issue -- I'm having trouble understanding
exactly what is going on. If it is easier, you can email me directly at yegg
at duckduckgo.com

~~~
Raphmedia
Problem A:

1) Install App on chrome

2) Do a search using the browser's address bar

3) A dialog with the text "is this the search engine you expected" appears.

4) Click the button to revert to previous settings.

5) App is now uninstalled.

\---

Problem B:

1) Install App on chrome

2) Go to chrome://settings/

3) Scroll to "Search engine used in the address bar"

4) Unable to change the settings as Chrome says "DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
is controlling this setting".

5) Click "Disable" in the hope that the app will still be installed but with a
different default search engine.

6) Entire app is disabled.

~~~
fencepost
OK, so when the Extension is installed in Chrome it takes over the omnibox
search, directs it to DDG, and does not allow it to be changed.

Put differently, to get the features like tracker blocking, privacy policy
scoring, etc. you _must_ also be using DDG for search. I'd call that something
that probably should be changed, or at least changeable in the options.

~~~
yegg
Unfortunately, this is currently the way Chrome works. We're looking for a way
around it, but it looks like they changed this behavior sometime last year. In
other browsers you can easily use another search engine without disabling the
entire thing.

------
adreamingsoul
This is awesome.

------
beaconfield
Good. Glad to see DDG keeps moving forward.

------
throwawayfinal
Please put the install links at the top.

------
Sonnol53
Saw you guys on Product Hunt!!

------
acct1771
Is nobody here aware of/concerned by DDG ownership's previous endeavors?

~~~
neospice
Please elaborate, I'm genuinely not aware of any of their previous endeavours
nor who the ownership is.

~~~
yegg
I occasionally get trolled around my previous company, Opobox, an early social
networking company that I ran from 2003-2006. As far as I can tell, the
trolling theme is that since I ever was associated with any kind of social
networking company, that somehow taints me/DuckDuckGo. It's purpose was to
help reunite old friends and classmates, and it actually helped develop my
privacy views and practices for what became DuckDuckGo.

For example we did what I think were some innovative things:

\--We collected the minimum amount of information possible.

\--Allowed people to automatically remove all their minimal information
permanently with one click or email.

\--Actually charged money as a business model instead of using advertising.

\--Never worked with any third-parties in terms of data targeting (and didn't
need to since that wasn't our business model).

Of course, these also made the company ultimately not able to compete in the
space, which was completely subsumed by Facebook.

I took these privacy ideas to DuckDuckGo, though, and realized in the case of
Web search the minimum amount of information needed is actually zero. Hence,
our privacy policy.

~~~
davidcuddeback
> _\--Actually charged money as a business model instead of using
> advertising._

Have you considered charging for premium DDG features? IOW, what's the long-
term viability of DDG?

~~~
yegg
Unfortunately, like with social networking, there is an established freeness
in the market, and so it is hard to charge people en masse. Fortunately for
web search though, you can make plenty of money without tracking people, and
so we've been profitable since 2014 and have no long-term viability issues.

~~~
quadrangle
w00t!! Is there some great public link that would be best to use in contacting
the rare honorable advertiser who might advertise with DDG?

I'm thinking along the lines of a conversation about why it's unethical to
feed Google / FB etc. given their fundamentally invasive business models and
someone asks what to do otherwise, so I send them a great intro link that
explains both that advertising on DDG is good ROI _and_ more ethical…

------
dawnbreez
"Install an arbitrary piece of code on your machine to improve your privacy."

Note that there is no link to the source code, no checksum. There's no
indication that DDG isn't doing exactly what they claim to be protecting
against. And the question comes up: what do they stand to gain from having
users install a mobile app on their phone?

~~~
O5vYtytb
Isn't this it? [https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy-
extension](https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy-extension)

------
fwdpropaganda
I'm not sure I understand what value DDG is providing exactly.

I use Bing with cookies and JS disabled. DDG on the other hand can't be used
with JS disabled.

Before you say that privacy is about cookies and JS has no bearing in it,
think that Google for example uses all kinds of JS to gather information about
your browser. That's extra datapoints that they gather about you.

~~~
yegg
This announcement is more than private search; it's all the privacy essentials
to search and browse the web -- tracker blocking, upgraded encryption, and
private search (with more to come) -- all in one package, available on all
major desktop browsers and mobile platforms.

With regards to the search component, we actually offer two Non-JS sites:
[https://duckduckgo.com/html](https://duckduckgo.com/html) &
[https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite). Also, turning off
JS and cookies still doens't prevent a search engine from tracking you, which
they can do simply by your IP address.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
> With regards to the search component, we actually offer two Non-JS sites:
> [https://duckduckgo.com/html](https://duckduckgo.com/html) &
> [https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite).

That's quite cool, thank you. For some reason it I can't make it work with
Firefox's "search keyword" (the feature of starting a query with a keyword on
the smart-bar which forwards that query to the search engine of your choice)

> Also, turning off JS and cookies still doens't prevent a search engine from
> tracking you, which they can do simply by your IP address.

Sure. Some datapoints about you are easier to hide than others. So are you
saying that DDG doesn't store that?

~~~
yegg
For Firefox, you need to use their plugin system -- there should be an addon
just for those e.g. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-ht...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-html/)

On privacy, yes, -- that's our privacy policy in a nutshell: we do not collect
or share any personal information --
[https://duckduckgo.com/privacy](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy)

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Can I give you a suggestion. When someone is using ddg with JS off, I think
that dgg shouldn't "redirect to non-JS site". Instead you guys should have the
same page being useable without JS using the <noscript> tag. Google and Bing
both have achieved that, so it's possible.

