Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 531 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#21

Post by bangonkeyboard »

harry8 wrote: post #15
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #10

EDIT: I didn't notice that this topic was about the DDG browser (which I didn't know existed) and responded assuming this was about the site/extension. For a browser, yes, a client-side solution is possible and probably preferable. Please check and upvote other comment trees. This makes sense to me and is not alarming. Getting favicons actually is difficult to do robustly; many applications and websites use Google's…

> Getting favicons actually is difficult to do robustly So if you're a privacy browser. Don't. Favicons are not essential. Or, at the very least make them "opt in" and explain it.

I don't see how this is a privacy violation in any way. The headline is that DDG is tracking the domains you visit, but favicons are loaded for every search result you see unconditional on whether you click them, and DDG already knows what those results are when they serve them to you.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#22

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #10

EDIT: I didn't notice that this topic was about the DDG browser (which I didn't know existed) and responded assuming this was about the site/extension. For a browser, yes, a client-side solution is possible and probably preferable. Please check and upvote other comment trees. This makes sense to me and is not alarming. Getting favicons actually is difficult to do robustly; many applications and websites use Google's…

Don’t they already have access to all the search results anyways? This doesn’t seem to be any privacy loss relative to that.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#23

Post by bangonkeyboard »

stefan_ wrote: post #16
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #10

EDIT: I didn't notice that this topic was about the DDG browser (which I didn't know existed) and responded assuming this was about the site/extension. For a browser, yes, a client-side solution is possible and probably preferable. Please check and upvote other comment trees. This makes sense to me and is not alarming. Getting favicons actually is difficult to do robustly; many applications and websites use Google's…

I don't need the favicon for a domain I never visited just because it adds some visual cool to your UI. That is not a thing. Cache it whenever I end up visiting the page and be done with it.

> Cache it whenever I end up visiting the page and be done with it.

DuckDuckGo can't do that because they don't have access to your browser's history and favicon cache, precisely to protect your privacy.

EDIT: This reply is wrong if DDG is the browser.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#24

Post by [deleted] »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #21
harry8 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting favicons actually is difficult to do robustly So if you're a privacy browser. Don't. Favicons are not essential. Or, at the very least make them "opt in" and explain it.

I don't see how this is a privacy violation in any way. The headline is that DDG is tracking the domains you visit, but favicons are loaded for every search result you see unconditional on whether you click them, and DDG already knows what those results are when they serve them to you.

[deleted]

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#25

Post by teej »

stefan_ wrote: post #16
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #10

EDIT: I didn't notice that this topic was about the DDG browser (which I didn't know existed) and responded assuming this was about the site/extension. For a browser, yes, a client-side solution is possible and probably preferable. Please check and upvote other comment trees. This makes sense to me and is not alarming. Getting favicons actually is difficult to do robustly; many applications and websites use Google's…

I don't need the favicon for a domain I never visited just because it adds some visual cool to your UI. That is not a thing. Cache it whenever I end up visiting the page and be done with it.

The favicon is an important visual landmark that aids in finding the correct search result in the list.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#26

Post by jakejarvis »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #18
lopmotr wrote: post #7

Nevermind privacy. How are favicons so complicated that they need a special service that understands edge cases. Just do it one standard way and if a minority of websites don't work, then exclude them. We've been through this mess before with all kinds of web standards devolving into mess.

The standard way involves a meta tag, right?

That's my understanding of how it's worked for decades...

1. Check for tag(s)

2. Check for /favicon.ico

3. ...give up?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong!

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#27

Post by tananaev »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #10

EDIT: I didn't notice that this topic was about the DDG browser (which I didn't know existed) and responded assuming this was about the site/extension. For a browser, yes, a client-side solution is possible and probably preferable. Please check and upvote other comment trees. This makes sense to me and is not alarming. Getting favicons actually is difficult to do robustly; many applications and websites use Google's…

For the search results DDG can do whatever they way. As far as I understand from the title, this is for the pages that you actually visit. For those pages it totally make sense for the browser to figure out favicon locally on its own.

As for complexity, I'm sure users of privacy oriented software would prefer to not have favicon in small percentage of corner cases rather than leaking browsing history.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#28

Post by kovac »

coronadisaster wrote: post #6

I don't really trust DuckDuckGo, but I use their search service because I trust Google less... I still trust Firefox more for a browser although it won't take much at this point to make me switch.

There's Qwant, a search engine. I'm using that. It's not as fast as Bing, but it does the job and seem to be trustworthy.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#29

Post by ghewgill »

tananaev wrote: post #2

Very weak argument for why they do it. Using a service to retrieve a favicon? Surely there's a way to implement the same logic locally.

So if favicons were gathered locally, then you would prefer that your own browser would reach out and make multiple requests to every (potentially dodgy) site listed on the search result page?

Note also that these are favicons for results that DDG has already given you. This isn't tracking your clicks. The list of sites that appear on the search result page is not new information to the search engine that just gave them to you.

EDIT: Like other commenters, I was not previously aware that DDG had a browser, and my comments were about this behaviour for the search engine results page.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#30

Post by harry8 »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #21
harry8 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting favicons actually is difficult to do robustly So if you're a privacy browser. Don't. Favicons are not essential. Or, at the very least make them "opt in" and explain it.

I don't see how this is a privacy violation in any way. The headline is that DDG is tracking the domains you visit, but favicons are loaded for every search result you see unconditional on whether you click them, and DDG already knows what those results are when they serve them to you.

so you use the ddg browser to go direct someplace with a favicon not via ddg search and ...?
Post reply on HN