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DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

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

#91

Post by haggy »

projomni wrote: post #19
CivBase wrote: post #8

This is a bad look for a company that is trying to build its brand on privacy and trust. Even though I don't use the DDG browser I hope they own up to this, rectify it quickly, and learn from it.

well... i'd much rather fix their deep search so it's as good as google's and not worry about this like this:)

Privacy has to be scrutized constantly and be the top priority. If it isn't, then you're going to end up with another google.

A direct correlation exists between the revenue Google receives for selling data and the quality of its search. Google focuses completely on tracking and search, with privacy behind a far far away afterthought (if it's a thought at all).

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

#92

Post by TabbyCatKirk »

Everyone is missing the point here. Let me break this down as simple as I can:

1. End user does a DDG search for "food" 2. The "food" query returns a list of search results, these results have each have a link, DDG wants to display the favicon for each link. 3. To be clear, DDG does not store or log the IP address of the user doing the query. They do, however, know what was queried, so they know "somebody" somewhere searched for "food". They have to know this, they are a search engine after all. 4. Since DDG wants to show the favicon "privately", and they dont want to put that logic/work on the client side (which could leak your IP), so instead DDG finds the favicon internally. 5. A DDG server, completely separate from anything search-related is then tasked with finding the favicon for your "food" query results, lets say the #1 result is www.allrecipes.com, so a DDG server goes to www.allrecipes.com and finds the exact favicon location. 6. The "found" favicons are then stored in a cache, and displayed from the cache like this: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/ip3/www.allrecipes.c... (and if no favicon is found in the local cache, you get a grey arrow by default) 7. I'd like to note, even with all this action, DDG doesn't know if you actually "visited" www.allrecipes.com, they simply know that some anonymous user did a search for "food", www.allrecipes.com was a search result, and a favicon was displayed. They dont know who searched for it because the users IP is not stored anywhere, they dont know if you visited www.allrecipes.com, they prevented you from leaking your IP to allrecipes.com since they didn't force the end user to load the favicon.

So whats the issue? What am I missing here?

PS: You know this works because after doing all these searches for food and seeing allrecipes.com (and even clicking allrecipes.com result in the DDG Mobile App or browser extension), guess what? allrecipes.com doesn't follow you around with re-targeting ads! Why? Because DDG prevented that from happening!

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

#93

Post by ddevault »

tagawa wrote: post #52

DuckDuckGo staff here. As mentioned in the linked page, the purpose of the request is to retrieve a website's favicon so that it can be displayed in certain places within the app or on the results page. We use an internal favicon service because it can be complicated to locate a favicon for a website. They can be stored in a variety of locations and in a variety of formats. The service understands these edge cases an…

I'll state this in no uncertain terms: this is not acceptable, and you need to stop doing it. It makes sense on your search engine, but adding it to your web browser is very much over the line.

I have read your explanations in good faith and they don't cut it. This behavior cannot continue. Good privacy promises are not based on trust - they're based on not ever handling private data in the first place. If you don't quickly admit your mistake and roll this back, it will jepoardize your entire brand - and rightfully so. If you believe this behavior is okay, then it demonstrates incompetence; if you don't believe this behavior is okay but do it anyway, it demonstrates malice.

This is the one thing you Should Not Have Done.

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

#94

Post by CivBase »

tagawa wrote: post #81
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t make sense for a browser: just embed the service’s logic in the browser, the browser has all the same information the service could get.

We had already had created this anonymous favicon service for our private search engine. In addition, doing it this way avoids another request (and potentially multiple) to the end site. The service is private as we do not collect any personal information (e.g. IP addresses) on any requests for this or any service and the requests are all end-to-end encrypted.

> In addition, doing it this way avoids another request (and potentially multiple) to the end site.

Potentially saving a few requests here and there is certainly not worth phoning home with that kind of data regardless of what records you keep how much you do to anonymize it. This is especially true for a company that has built its brand on promises of privacy!

Besides, favicon requests are small potatoes compared to the kind of tracking, ads, metrics, and other often-unnecessary page resources that bog down most of the modern web. And a well-designed website can mitigate the issue pretty easily.

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

#95

Post by systemvoltage »

tagawa wrote: post #79
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.

We had already had created this anonymous favicon service for our private search engine. In addition, doing it this way avoids another request (and potentially multiple) to the end site. The service is private as we do not collect any personal information (e.g. IP addresses) on any requests for this or any service and the requests are all end-to-end encrypted.

Why not do it locally? It is one extra request to the favicon link in the header and cache it. Or cache it when the user visits the website. Or explicit button in the settings UI to refresh favicons locally.

There are so many options.

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

#96

Post by moonchild »

stan_rogers wrote: post #45
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 always Startpage. You use Startpage; Startpage uses Google for you, with their own user agent - no history, no tracking.

Startpage was bought by an ad company.

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

#97

Post by ddevault »

TabbyCatKirk wrote: post #92

Everyone is missing the point here. Let me break this down as simple as I can: 1. End user does a DDG search for "food" 2. The "food" query returns a list of search results, these results have each have a link, DDG wants to display the favicon for each link. 3. To be clear, DDG does not store or log the IP address of the user doing the query. They do, however, know what was queried, so they know "somebody" somewhere…

This is not duckduckgo.com. This is the DuckDuckGo-branded end-user web browser.

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

#98

Post by haggy »

tagawa wrote: post #79
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.

We had already had created this anonymous favicon service for our private search engine. In addition, doing it this way avoids another request (and potentially multiple) to the end site. The service is private as we do not collect any personal information (e.g. IP addresses) on any requests for this or any service and the requests are all end-to-end encrypted.

Your answer to all these criticisms is a lazy one. You are saying "this already exists for other things so we use it regardless of what the correct method is". Just because something exists in one form doesn't mean it's the correct choice.

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #56
tagawa wrote: post #52

DuckDuckGo staff here. As mentioned in the linked page, the purpose of the request is to retrieve a website's favicon so that it can be displayed in certain places within the app or on the results page. We use an internal favicon service because it can be complicated to locate a favicon for a website. They can be stored in a variety of locations and in a variety of formats. The service understands these edge cases an…

This doesn’t make sense for a browser: just embed the service’s logic in the browser, the browser has all the same information the service could get.

[deleted]
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