DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by bluesign » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:19 AM UTC

azalemeth wrote: post #356

pelliphant wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, this is the response people here want to hear. And if this gets fixed in a reasonable timeframe, this is just one of those "everyone makes a mistake one in a while"-things, no big deal.

If anything, it's much better than 'no big deal'. It's "We made this design decision, thought you would like it -- we've learnt, changed, and will avoid it later". Can you imagine Google doing something similar? Heck, they're just about to throw the Android rooting community under a hardware-attestation DRM-filled bus.

More like we made a design decision, than someone warned us this is bad for privacy, we ignored, after 1 year it blew up on HN, now we are fixing it.

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

#372

Post by afiori » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

warpspin wrote: post #295

serverQuestion wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? a TCP request already breaks the GDPR rules? Didn't know that... Any human readable ways of dealing with that?

If it is an unnecessary request to another service, yes. IP-adddresses are considered personally identifying information. TCP requests transmit IP addresses. Under the strict interpretation of the GDPR, a lot of things which are common outside the EU might be illegal, like e.g. embedding Google Fonts. To be on the safe side, people usually at least list these external dependencies in their privacy policies to constru…

I don't think this is an accurate way to analyze GDPR compliance. As the staffer points out this favicon service follows their own privacy policy, if by this policy they keep (or analyze, sell, distribute, etc.) no data on your use of the service then there is nothing of interest for the GDPR.

They might have to prove that their privacy policy is indeed GDPR conformant and that their service works as advertised, but in practice this is likely more about public trust that legality.

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

#373

Post by Fiveplus » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

baud147258 wrote: post #362

bartread wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But... the reaction here is "they made a mistake, let's pile on like kids in a playground" ignoring the genuinely huger issue of the amount of info and mining that google et al. do. There's no measure of proportion in the responses, someone is making a mistake then there's a wolfish, pack-like desire to get stuck in and hurt someone. Sadly people simply derive satisfaction from piling on like this. The pop psycholo…

Also with the current social media platforms, it's really easy to find and participate in such pile up.

The current social media climate favors disagreement. This is directly in correlation with 'engagement' around which platforms are designed. Call it banking on outrage/hacktivism/quarrelling or simply engaging in peaceful debates. Companies and their algorithms have come to a funny conclusion that this is what increases said engagement (I'm not questioning their business model). User retention is crucial in this era, so is the intention of getting them to check back in ever so often.

Thus, dark patterns emerge. Point is, once you get used to 'that' online-aura, you unwillingly carry it with you wherever you go. Human brain does not have buttons to switch between modes. It's comically easy to get into this mindset and hard to shun it.

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

#374

Post by classified » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #313

There's an interesting disease showing up here in the responses. I accept DDG's statement that this is about a favicon and that they "do not collect or share any personal information", and despite that, I also agree with others that DDG should be on the safe side and just stop doing this small thing. It's just the safer and more moral thing to do (So DDG, as many are suggesting, plz stop doing it. Today is good). But…

After we have been stung for the umpteenth time patience starts to wear thin.

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

#375

Post by epi0Bauqu » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

_hl_ wrote: post #369

yegg wrote: post #340

Hi all, Founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo here. I’m literally just waking up and reading the comments here. I’m new to this issue and happy to commit us to move to doing this locally in the browser and will have us move on that ASAP. That said, I want to be clear that we did not and have not collected any personal information here. As other staff have referenced, our services are encrypted and throw away PII like IP addr…

I've already posted this somewhere else, but I'll copy it here again as well: It's not immediately obvious whether it is more privacy preserving if the client automatically makes a request to each site in the search results while scrolling through the results, especially since you're already trusting DDG when performing the search. Maybe this should be an opt-in rather than an opt-out feature? All in all its really n…

Yes, after consulting with staff, I understand we thought it was more privacy protecting because we know our services are already encrypted and throw away PII, and so to get the favicon you could either (a) make another request to our known anonymous service or (b) make a request (or possibly multiple) to a non-anonymous service. On the other hand it is another request to a distinct domain that traverses another path on the Internet, albeit an encrypted one.

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

#376

Post by warpspin » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:24 AM UTC

_hl_ wrote: post #369

yegg wrote: post #340

Hi all, Founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo here. I’m literally just waking up and reading the comments here. I’m new to this issue and happy to commit us to move to doing this locally in the browser and will have us move on that ASAP. That said, I want to be clear that we did not and have not collected any personal information here. As other staff have referenced, our services are encrypted and throw away PII like IP addr…

I've already posted this somewhere else, but I'll copy it here again as well: It's not immediately obvious whether it is more privacy preserving if the client automatically makes a request to each site in the search results while scrolling through the results, especially since you're already trusting DDG when performing the search. Maybe this should be an opt-in rather than an opt-out feature? All in all its really n…

This was not about search results, where their favicon webservice is in fact privacy increasing, but about the privacy browser and the favicons it displays, where it is privacy decreasing as it involved sending information about visited sites to a central authority while you are not on the DDG search engine. For example the TabRenderer will fetch the favicons from DDG instead of from the site you are actually visiting: https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android/blob/db728523240e37727...

Anyway, great decision by Gabriel.

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

#377

Post by bluesign » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:25 AM UTC

yegg wrote: post #340

Hi all, Founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo here. I’m literally just waking up and reading the comments here. I’m new to this issue and happy to commit us to move to doing this locally in the browser and will have us move on that ASAP. That said, I want to be clear that we did not and have not collected any personal information here. As other staff have referenced, our services are encrypted and throw away PII like IP addr…

I think it would be more clear if you come up with a statement like:

‘we never used this data, other than showing favicons’

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

#378

Post by _hl_ » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

warpspin wrote: post #376

_hl_ wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've already posted this somewhere else, but I'll copy it here again as well: It's not immediately obvious whether it is more privacy preserving if the client automatically makes a request to each site in the search results while scrolling through the results, especially since you're already trusting DDG when performing the search. Maybe this should be an opt-in rather than an opt-out feature? All in all its really n…

This was not about search results, where their favicon webservice is in fact privacy increasing, but about the privacy browser and the favicons it displays, where it is privacy decreasing as it involved sending information about visited sites to a central authority while you are not on the DDG search engine. For example the TabRenderer will fetch the favicons from DDG instead of from the site you are actually visitin…

Ah I guess I should have read TFA l, because search results have a similar feature (that is opt-out). For a browser I agree it makes more sense to get the icon directly from the site being visited without any privacy risks.

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

#379

Post by epi0Bauqu » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:28 AM UTC

bluesign wrote: post #377

yegg wrote: post #340

Hi all, Founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo here. I’m literally just waking up and reading the comments here. I’m new to this issue and happy to commit us to move to doing this locally in the browser and will have us move on that ASAP. That said, I want to be clear that we did not and have not collected any personal information here. As other staff have referenced, our services are encrypted and throw away PII like IP addr…

I think it would be more clear if you come up with a statement like: ‘we never used this data, other than showing favicons’

We never used this data, other than showing favicons.

In fact, we didn't (and don't in general) collect any user-level data in the first place, per our strict privacy policy: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

In this case, the way it works is you hit our favicon service and it returns the favicon, not using any PII in the process, and our web servers are configured not to log any PII. In other words, our system is technically designed and we are legally bound by our privacy policy to not use this data for anything other than showing favicons.

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

#380

Post by Gigablah » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

niftylettuce wrote: post #80

morpheuskafka wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ForwardEmail is a great service, thanks for making it!

Thanks! I'm rolling out the following within probably the next 7 days: - All new load balanced infrastructure - Browser extension + API wrapper - Support for pixel tracking blocker (opt-in checkbox or TXT setting) - Smart alerting - Globby/regex support If you follow my Twitter or the GitHub releases you will get updates.

Do you plan to have an SMTP relay?