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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

#201

Post by [deleted] »

niftylettuce wrote: post #84
verandaguy wrote: post #74

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.

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by slenk »

heavyset_go wrote: post #12
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.

BitWarden does this, too.

If you host your own Bitwarden server you don't have to worry about that.

Also different expectations

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

#203

Post by abc-xyz »

dabbernaught420 wrote: post #104
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

Also worth mentioning they're closed-source, US-based and for-profit. Why exactly do people trust them? Simply because they write a few articles/ads saying "privacy is important"?

If you're willing to sacrifice search quality for privacy, as in switching from Google to DuckDuckGo, then you might as well take a step further and switch from Google to Searx/Ask.Moe.

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

#204

Post by jpangs88 »

The favicons on the duckduckgo browser are often worse than other browsers in my opinion. For example the BBC website where DDG interestingly enough just uses /favicon.ico and the other browsers use the apple touch icon. (Information I found from just looking at the pages headers)

Don't really understand why they do extra work to get worse results... This feels to me slightly worse than just a privacy concern, it's a misunderstanding of their domain which leads me to the question of what else do they not fully understand.

The good news is that you can have the DDG search engine as a default in other browsers.

(I understand that the DDG browser is probably not their main focus and any lack of knowledge can potentially be just on their mobile browser.)

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

#205

Post by slmjkdbtl »

dabbernaught420 wrote: post #104
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

most of us use it because we like ducks

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

#206

Post by Aeolun »

Mandatum wrote: post #156
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…

What a bizarre potential privacy flaw to introduce for a tiny little icon nobody cares about. I understand it, usability and UX is important - but you guys are DDG! Come on! Your customers all have tinfoil hats!

> Your customers all have tinfoil hats!

Generally speaking. Mine is shielded with lead.

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

#207

Post by Zhenya »

niftylettuce wrote: post #84
verandaguy wrote: post #74

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.

So you're a 100x poweruser. Got it.

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

hst-m wrote: post #200
st3fan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They call it the "DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser" yet it sends data back to their servers on every site you visit. Collecting all your search terms and saving them wasn't enough, now they want data on all the sites you visit outside of the DDG search page. That they refuse to turn it off tells you they are just as data-focused as every other company. They should update their app description: "By the way, every website yo…

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by speedgoose »

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 is a bit concerning that for a company with a marketing so focus on privacy, you guys thought it was a good idea to have such a service.

Nobody in the company at any point thought that it could be a problem?

Your strict privacy policy mean nothing by the way, because you are a USA company and you must respect your local laws such as the patriot act, which are not very privacy friendly.

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

#210

Post by enriquto »

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.

> The service is private as we do not collect any personal information

This sentence is 100% meaningless. I understand you have good intentions, but these things must rely on proof, never on trust. Either you get this information or you don't; whether you say you "collect" it is inconsequential.

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