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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

#111
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…

You're repeating what's on that page, which is exactly what everyone is worried about in the first place.

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

#112
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.

Seconded. Day in and day out we're given empty promises we can never audit -- now it's being done DuckDuckGo staff too?

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

#113
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work? What does Google have to gain from it? Google has pretty aggressive anti-scraping protections to protect against this exact behavior, so why would they allow Startpage to get away with it? What does Startpage have to gain from it? Unlike DDG, they don't seem to have any core product, so they fully depend on Google's goodwill which is very shaky grounds when it comes to a long-term business.

> Unlike DDG, they don't seem to have any core product, so they fully depend on Google's goodwill which is very shaky grounds when it comes to a long-term business. Isn't that exactly like DDG but Google instead of Bing?

My understanding is that DDG is using Bing results as well as their own. Whether their in-house results can stand on their own is another matter, but at least they're trying to reduce their dependency on Bing, where as Startpage is not.

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

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree on most points, actually: >Faster, less bloat Stock Firefox doesn't actually have that much bloat, and it's not noticeably slower than Chrome on reasonably modern hardware (i.e.: most page loads are near-instant, same as in Chrome on a good connection). >Extension support for Chromium is way better too Until Google decides that your extension is unworthy of being in their store. This notably happened with Pu…

As I said in other another comment, I'm a power user. And by power user I mean probably 10x the normal standard of what a 10x power user means. Tooling is everything to me; which is why I prefer this over anything else. I'm very biased.

What does that even mean? Ten times? Tooling is everything?

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

#115
post #81

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.

Saving a request is not a good reason to phone home, especially given what the DDG brand is built on and the main reason I would use it over Google. Please reconsider.

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

#116
post #81

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.

You may not collect it, but your upstream could collect it, and encryption has a shelf life.

It's a really bad look and you should ditch it.

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Unable to reproduce. Links appear to be plain links and no JS intercepts clicks.

To get prefixed result URLs, use GET not POST. Try duckduckgo.com/lite/ and lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/

If I recall correctly there is a way to turn off the prefixed result URLs without having to turn on Javascript, by adding/changing a URL parameter, e.g., kh. However that is not the default setting. Not very friendly toward the privacy-conscious user who has Javascript disabled and does not read HN to find out about otherwise undocumented URL parameter usage.

For certain queries, I can actually get a different first result based on the HTTP method I use.

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

#118
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 don’t care if I get the favicon or not... can I just opt out of this functionality?

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

#119
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…

[deleted]

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

#120
post #81

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.

And all you lose in the process is hard-earned trust from people like me, who switched to DDG years ago for privacy concerns.

This is troubling.

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