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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

#101

Post by CivBase »

haggy wrote: post #91
projomni wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I'm sure Google's thinking about privacy. They're thinking "will our latest privacy violation create enough of an uproar to affect our bottom line, or will the users just accept it like they usually do?".

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

#102

Post by bscphil »

pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #58
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…

"This is not to say that DDG is perfect: links you click do seem to be redirected through a /l/ page on their domain ..." I am surprised the user is not complaining about this instead of the favicons. Their privacy policy goes on about the privacy implications of Referer headers and instead of calling out browsers for sending Referer by default, they instead give themselves power to record all the user's clicked resu…

This is done only for browsers that don't support setting the referrer policy. https://caniuse.com/referrer-policy. It should not be happening with any modern browser, and (like the other reply) I don't see it in mine (Firefox).

See here: https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/rduckduckgocom/

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

#103

Post by [deleted] »

systemvoltage wrote: post #86
tagawa wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems like DDG just doesn't want to do more work to make the browser do the sensible thing and instead piggy back on their existing favicon service, and then going to make the argument that it is safe with us. The domain of browser is totally different from reaching out to the website and rendering favicons server side. Do you not see this as a problem? I think it is acceptable to say "We agree this is a problem,…

[deleted]

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

#104

Post by dabbernaught420 »

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.

In my view, anyone who trusts ddg is a bit silly - founder has a bad track record on user privacy. Founded Names Database[1], a social media website designed to collect user information as aggressively as possible, before selling all the information to classmates.com.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_Database

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

#105

Post by notRobot »

moonchild wrote: post #96
stan_rogers wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_i...

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

#106

Post by uncletammy »

ancarda wrote: post #88
SimeVidas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can users turn this off?

https://duckduckgo.com/settings#appearance Uncheck the very last option "Site Icons"

This should be the top response. Just under it should be a DDG staffer telling us they will be turning this config option off by default starting with the the next release.

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

#107

Post by LeoNatan25 »

awinter-py wrote: post #71

seems like the ticket author found this by reading code (presumably was grepping for duckduckgo.com URLs) this would never happen with a consumer-facing product from apple or google; someone would have to MITM their whole OS to discover phone-home

It actually happens very often. People monitor their networks often, and pay close attention to such problems. Just search for “Apple phone home” and you’ll find many cases where people complain about Apple’s various services making worrying requests.

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

#108

Post by NotSammyHagar »

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 appreciate you answering, probably knowing you'd face some negative feedback. Saying "we should trust you, it's for a good reason" is what google and everyone else says. You'll be better off if you just end this. The loss of the fav icon is less important than keeping your credibility.

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

#109

Post by st3fan »

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…

Take the code from Firefox iOS or Android-components. We spent a lot of time on these and it is all on device.

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/android-components

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/Firefox-iOS

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

#110

Post by ximeng »

ancarda wrote: post #88
SimeVidas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can users turn this off?

https://duckduckgo.com/settings#appearance Uncheck the very last option "Site Icons"

I'm assuming that doesn't affect the browser, which is what this issue relates to.
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