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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

#251

Post by mhaberl »

Product description (play store):

"Tired of being tracked online? We can help."

And then they track you.

Yes, that might not be intentional and is used "just" for the favicon, yes they might not use the info on the domains you visit for tracking you today, but the data is there.

Why not use that data tomorow "just" to see what kinds of pages their customers (browser users) are visiting so they can better place their ads.. and then maybe some other idea.. this is a path that many such companies went ("don't be evil").

You either respect the user privacy or you don't - there is no middle "just for this little feature" ground

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

#252

Post by abc-xyz »

leereeves wrote: post #216
abc-xyz wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a DDG user I don't feel like I'm sacrificing anything. Two sets of results are better than one (I can see Google results by adding !g, which I do less than once per day on average) and, ironically, DDG bangs are the easiest way to use even Google services like Translate and Scholar.

Ask.Moe also support bangs (I know !g and !gt works, not sure about scholar). Searx doesn’t but I imagine they’d gladly accept a pull request for it.

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

#253

Post by drawfloat »

jacquesm wrote: post #190
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…

Does Gabriel know about this? If not could you please clue him in and get some guidance because you are absolutely getting roasted here and are wrecking DDG's carefully built up reputation. I can easily see how this might seem to be a good idea to you and other DDG engineers but it goes 180 degrees against DDG's stated mission. In other words: you may be well outside your paygrade on this.

I don't think it's fair to say this comment is 'wrecking DDG's carefully built up reputation'. If what he describes is damaging their reputation to you, that's on the business, not on the commenter. If anything, the commenter seems to have been honest and straightforward with what's going on.

Sounds like you'd prefer him to have run a message past management/public relations first?

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

#254

Post by neiman »

mysterydip wrote: post #57
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…

Are all these edge cases part of the html/w3c/whichever standard? If not, let the edge cases fail. I'm not going to lose sleep over an icon not showing for a site I'm visiting once.

I agree. Sometimes it feels that companies throw any possible value out of the bus in order for the perfect UX.

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

#255

Post by scoutt »

ajnin wrote: post #89
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…

You really can't use "we promise we won't misuse the information" as an argument, that's what everyone says whether it's true or not, and the whole point of using a privacy-centric browser is that as a user you can't trust those kinds of promises.

AND being so reluctant to remove this pinging mechanism adds more doubts about the real purpose.

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

#256

Post by MrGilbert »

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…

Maybe I'm too old for this, but wasn't a favicon supposed to be located at "fancy.url/favicon.ico", or alternatively as a ""?

Curious to know why this is an issue.

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

#257

Post by smolder »

zeckalpha wrote: post #188

Seems a bit much, but k-anonymity could work here. Hash the domain, take the prefix, get a batch of favicons back. They won’t know which you visited, but still get the benefits of consistent favicon support.

That's an elegant fix, but for a problem that wouldn't exist if the feature was properly designed. (IOW, designed as a local function.)

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

#258

Post by smolder »

austhrow743 wrote: post #197
the_duke wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a bit off-topic for the concrete issue. Advertising your Twitter for the advice of "switch to somewhat well-known browser X, install these very common extensions and use a VPN" is also a bit ... odd.

An ex DuckDuckGo employee recommending people use an alternative browser over the DuckDuckGo browser, in a post about the DuckDuckGo browser spying on its users, is about as on topic as you can get; after the current employee giving an explanation.

They said "worked with" duckduckgo. I'm not clear on what that means. I think they'd have said "worked for" if it was direct employment.

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

#259

Post by raxxorrax »

jacquesm wrote: post #190
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…

Does Gabriel know about this? If not could you please clue him in and get some guidance because you are absolutely getting roasted here and are wrecking DDG's carefully built up reputation. I can easily see how this might seem to be a good idea to you and other DDG engineers but it goes 180 degrees against DDG's stated mission. In other words: you may be well outside your paygrade on this.

> you may be well outside your paygrade on this.

Not as worse as publicly denouncing an honest engineer while referencing his paygrade. I hope there is no affiliation you have with DDG to be honest, because this is much, much worse.

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

#260

Post by RMPR »

lowwave wrote: post #227
ajnin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really can't use "we promise we won't misuse the information" as an argument, that's what everyone says whether it's true or not, and the whole point of using a privacy-centric browser is that as a user you can't trust those kinds of promises.

By the way how DDG spend money on the ads like at bus stop, I already starting to NOT trust them. Spend the money on development of development of products. Seems like time to get SearX a try now: https://searx.me

FWIW I got higher quality results with Searx.
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