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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

#161
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faster + less bloat

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…

Also important to note that ungoogled-chromium builds can be provided by anyone that submits them, (e.g. not the maintainers)

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

#162
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure that "[you are] a bit silly" is the ad hominem attack, not that calling out the founder is an ad hominem attack.

That’s not an ad hominem attack. The comment didn’t say that the person’s argument is wrong because that person is silly. Clearly the comment is saying that the argument itself is silly.

The intent of the comment was probably not ad hominem, as if it were rephrased like "trusting ddg is silly" because then silly is modifying the act of trusting. But as-written, silly is modifying anyone (a person) without distinguishing whether silliness is the cause or the effect; if silliness is the cause of the trust then it's an ad hominem attack. It would be more clear-cut if instead of "silly" they said "low intelligence."

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

#163
post #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?

From elsewhere in this thread:

https://duckduckgo.com/settings#appearance

Uncheck the very last option "Site Icons"

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

#164
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…

What a wussy excuse. This should have been a no-brainer decision: do we quietly compromise privacy so that our users can have little icons on their browser tabs? How absurd.

Duckduckgo chose compliance with the inconsequential minutae of bigtech over its primary pain point. This is indicative of misalignment between stated values and the values demonstrated through actions. If you guys made this call, sacrificing privacy for something so banal, it doesn't bode well for what's going on in the rest of your operations. That means the problem isnt technical, its cultural, which are unfixable, therefore it's pretty much over. Good luck to regain trust once you've been outed as a put on.

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

#165
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…

come on dude. I thought you got a better answer.

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

#166
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…

What a wussy excuse. This should have been a no-brainer decision: do we quietly compromise privacy so that our users can have little icons on their browser tabs? How absurd. Duckduckgo chose compliance with the inconsequential minutae of bigtech over its primary pain point. This is indicative of misalignment between stated values and the values demonstrated through actions. If you guys made this call, sacrificing pri…

They need to run international ad campaigns, what's that tell you?

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot recommend Brave due to the autosuggestions-for-profit feature. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474842 You can install uBlock Origin in 10 seconds from the GitHub release page (see previous link shared). This is vastly better than anything I've seen for ad-blocking.

Wow, I did not know about that. Between this and the original post it seems no matter what every company ends up selling its soul to the devil.

https://github.com/braver-browser/

A Brave fork meant to address this issue. Time will tell.

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

#168
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 wonder how tone deaf you have to be to leave this response and think you're doing the right thing.

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

#169
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.

I understand we’re suppose to take your word but it’s making me skeptical now about the actual intentions. If DDG truly cared about user privacy then you shouldn’t transmit user information for something as trivial as favicons.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why ungoogled-chromium or Firefox over Brave? Brave is the only browser that includes strong ad and tracker blocking by default, which is the best way to ensure your privacy on the internet. In fact, every decision I've seen from them makes me think they care the most about user privacy, period.

I cannot recommend Brave due to the autosuggestions-for-profit feature. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474842 You can install uBlock Origin in 10 seconds from the GitHub release page (see previous link shared). This is vastly better than anything I've seen for ad-blocking.

Braver (https://github.com/braver-browser/) is a Brave fork meant to address this and other issues.
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