Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide • Hacker News Board

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#131

Post by dschobel » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 11:33 PM UTC

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #42

cletus wrote: post #37

I have a question: does this policy of DDG violate their legal responsibilities? Thats a serious question. I believe that law enforcement requires some form of data retention but I'm not sure what.

No, nothing that I've ever come across says you have to save and store peoples' personal information. If you have it, then you have to abide for legal requests for it, but if you don't have it, you don't have it.

As a caveat, I remember some techno-illiterate judge ruling that having the data in memory constituted a record with the implication that by not persisting the record/document you were intentionally destroying it. I'll try to find the link.

edit: found it

A federal judge in Los Angeles last week ruled (PDF) that a computer server's RAM, or random-access memory, is a tangible document that can be stored and must be turned over in a lawsuit.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/us-ruling-makes-server-ram-a-documen...

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#132

Post by andrewljohnson » Mon, Jan 03, 2011, 11:50 PM UTC

There is a rash of this kind of marketing I see cropping up on Hacker News, marketing which promotes one company while badmouthing another. We saw it from Posterous, Adioso, and now DuckDuckGo.

* Adioso vs. Bing: http://blog.adioso.com/sorry-bing-adioso-is-still-the-worlds...

* Posterous vs. Tumblr (and others): http://blog.posterous.com/hey-tumblr-users-got-comments-want...

Setting aside whether or not you want to be perceived as cutthroat or just straight-up douchey, the real question is whether or not this the most effective spin.

I think it might be better just to talk about how great privacy is at DuckDuckGo, perhaps in comparison to other search engines in general.

DDG calling out Google individually, Adioso calling out Bing individually, or in the case of Posterous, calling out other startups, isn't how I would play the game.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#133

Post by 1337p337 » Tue, Jan 04, 2011, 12:06 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #124

axod wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of stallmans endless ranting about freedom and software. The evidence is that the masses don't care. They just want stuff that works and solves problems for them. Is it open source? Why would anyone (apart from a geek) care?

If the average person knew that their Google searches can potentially lead to credit rejections or trouble with health insurance providers (hypothetical at this point, but with recent trends not as farfetched as before), I think they certainly would care. The reason why the masses don't care is because they don't know why kind of havoc this sort of lack of privacy can cause. I for one am glad someone is educating the…

I think that the lack of understanding about how this stuff works really is the root of non-tech people being apparently apathetic about it. Of course, the observation is all anecdotal on my part, and a lot of people seem to have anecdotal evidence (One that stands out in my mind: http://twitter.com/dozba/status/19237941121388544 ). I wonder if anyone has done a study about how accurately the average user models this stuff internally.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#134

Post by dpapathanasiou » Tue, Jan 04, 2011, 12:26 AM UTC

andrewljohnson wrote: post #132

There is a rash of this kind of marketing I see cropping up on Hacker News, marketing which promotes one company while badmouthing another. We saw it from Posterous, Adioso, and now DuckDuckGo. * Adioso vs. Bing: http://blog.adioso.com/sorry-bing-adioso-is-still-the-worlds... * Posterous vs. Tumblr (and others): http://blog.posterous.com/hey-tumblr-users-got-comments-want... Setting aside whether or not you want to b…

I think it might be better just to talk about how great privacy is at DuckDuckGo, perhaps in comparison to other search engines in general.

Except there are no other search engines, in practical terms.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#135

Post by epi0Bauqu » Tue, Jan 04, 2011, 12:29 AM UTC

andrewljohnson wrote: post #132

There is a rash of this kind of marketing I see cropping up on Hacker News, marketing which promotes one company while badmouthing another. We saw it from Posterous, Adioso, and now DuckDuckGo. * Adioso vs. Bing: http://blog.adioso.com/sorry-bing-adioso-is-still-the-worlds... * Posterous vs. Tumblr (and others): http://blog.posterous.com/hey-tumblr-users-got-comments-want... Setting aside whether or not you want to b…

I'm obviously biased, but I thought about this a lot before doing this page. First off, I tried to take the informative approach, not the badmouthing approach. In fact, this is the most informative page about search privacy I know about. You may reasonably disagree I got there, but that was indeed the goal.

Second, for most people, Google is search. So not talking about them in the context of search is almost useless. In other words, there is no real way to talk up DDG privacy without explaining what happens when you use Google. It just isn't meaningful because most people don't know what the baseline is.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#136

Post by andrewljohnson » Tue, Jan 04, 2011, 12:32 AM UTC

dpapathanasiou wrote: post #134

andrewljohnson wrote: post #132

There is a rash of this kind of marketing I see cropping up on Hacker News, marketing which promotes one company while badmouthing another. We saw it from Posterous, Adioso, and now DuckDuckGo. * Adioso vs. Bing: http://blog.adioso.com/sorry-bing-adioso-is-still-the-worlds... * Posterous vs. Tumblr (and others): http://blog.posterous.com/hey-tumblr-users-got-comments-want... Setting aside whether or not you want to b…

I think it might be better just to talk about how great privacy is at DuckDuckGo, perhaps in comparison to other search engines in general. Except there are no other search engines, in practical terms.

So why actually say Google? People will just get it, without having to single out a company. Let them make the leap.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#137

Post by epi0Bauqu » Tue, Jan 04, 2011, 12:32 AM UTC

axod wrote: post #127

potatolicious wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the average person knew that their Google searches can potentially lead to credit rejections or trouble with health insurance providers (hypothetical at this point, but with recent trends not as farfetched as before), I think they certainly would care. The reason why the masses don't care is because they don't know why kind of havoc this sort of lack of privacy can cause. I for one am glad someone is educating the…

Highly hypothetical - to the extreme. How would any insurance co. know if it's me, or someone else in the household? Also afaik health insurance is mainly a US phenomenon thank god.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870464860457562...

There are lots of ways this could play out. If you go to the site and register (increasingly likely), they might be able to detect you individually. Secondly, providers are starting to line up data by email address and other personal facts, so they may be able to match you like that. But even if they aren't absolutely sure it is you, they can still use the information to put you in different initial pools that could be used, for example, to ask you more specific follow-up questions that then put you in different risk pools.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#138

Post by pacemkr » Tue, Jan 04, 2011, 12:40 AM UTC

I believe I was one of the people who requested this. Namely, a better explanation of why DDG not tracking your search history is a big deal.

Implementation details aside, this page must exists and I applaud Gabriel for making it. Why? I must have been living under a rock, but I for one have never heard of https search for Google -- and I'm not exactly a computer newb.

Privacy should be the default, so "use secure Google" is a ridiculous response to legitimate privacy concerns.

Feedback:

1. I really appreciated how fast information is delivered. "One thing leads to another." And its very clear up to...

2. You lost me after the "Your profile can also be sold," with lolcat material. It really threw me off and I almost forgot what I was reading about. On my first run through the page, did not absorb ANY information past that point.

3. I only noticed the multiple (happens) links on the second run. Noticed one somewhere along the way on the first run, but not the reast. This is the important part. It tells me that this isn't a list of "imagine these unlikely events and fear", its a list of "did you know this actually happened."

4. The images establish pace for the reader, but, I can't stress it enough, they must communicate additional information. Up until the parental control cat we get a visual of what happens. I can also relate to the images because I've seen ads for "wacom tablets" follow me for months after I bought the freaking thing and I've seen the Google Analytics control panel. The image of the woman signifies that her profile is slowly building up. What information does the parental control cat or austin powers communicate?

5. The design is a little too bland, but as noted above, that's not the biggest problem. I wanted to link my friends to the page, but then got to the images and felt that the message would be lost on them as it was lost on me.

Hope this helps and thank you for making the page.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#139

Post by sesqu » Tue, Jan 04, 2011, 12:49 AM UTC

LordLandon wrote: post #122

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate ads. I despise them. And I work as a small-time consultant along with my studies. When I install/fix a machine, I always load Firefox with adblock plus due to the amount of harassing nasty ads. Being the location where I do the majority of my business, they are almost exclusively on dialup, so even a 100kb image add is literally 25 seconds extra load time. Now, am I anti-capitalist? Not quite. I agree that som…

I do not want myself distracted from material that has no bearing on what I am looking at. Just to play devil's advocate, but wouldn't targetted ads be more preferable then, since they WOULD have a bearing on what you're looking at?

No, they would have bearing onwho is looking at them.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#140

Post by X-Istence » Tue, Jan 04, 2011, 1:20 AM UTC

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #35

The first sentence when I stripped out the pictures was "When you search Google, and click on a link, your search term is sent to that site, along with your browser & computer info, which can often uniquely identify you." Referrers are a part of the way the web has worked since before Google existed. They're a browser-level feature more than something related to specific websites. But if referrers bother you, just us…

Ignoring the search term being sent, browser and computer info is ALWAYS available to the target site, that is not something Google can even stop. Browser send information on who they are, JavaScript allows probing of what is installed, how big the screen is and all of that fun stuff.

So I don't see how that sentence is even fair at all, Duck Duck Go might stop the search term from being sent (and as a webmaster I'd hate that as it makes it harder to figure out how users are getting to my site), but they can't stop browser and computer info from being sent.