I guess they collect statistics of the sites that people visit. This is anonymous but valuable information.
Your guesses are both wrong (see upthread) and irrelevant.
I just reread the thread and don't know what you're referencing.
DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
441–450 of 531 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#442There'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…
You're right mr throwaway, let's be adults here and stop using DDG.
Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#443Hi 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…
> That said, I want to be clear that we did not and have not collected any personal information here. So, you do collect information just not the kind you would classify as 'personal information'. I wonder if my personal domain with my full name qualifies? There is no way this feature would be created in a company built on privacy considerations. Like, wow!
Sure it could. A junior programmer aware of the values but not the repercussions could easily overlook this without any malice or disregard for privacy.
Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#444There'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…
You're right mr throwaway, let's be adults here and stop using DDG.
What would you suggest as a better alternative to protect your privacy?
Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#445There'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…
Oh, please. There's a million threads on HN complaining about Google and Facebook. Doesn't even matter if they did something, any post will still have those comments. You can't consider the proportionality of the response by just one thread. It's really quite amazing that when a company that's hitched it's brand entirely to privacy first commits a big privacy faux pas, hides it for a year, and then doubles down on it…
It was not IMHO meant to deflect from DDG. It was a more general statement about peoples responses. I dislike trendy phrases but the one in play here is "outrage culture". Its not good and it's getting more common.
Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That said, I want to be clear that we did not and have not collected any personal information here. So, you do collect information just not the kind you would classify as 'personal information'. I wonder if my personal domain with my full name qualifies? There is no way this feature would be created in a company built on privacy considerations. Like, wow!
Sure it could. A junior programmer aware of the values but not the repercussions could easily overlook this without any malice or disregard for privacy.
Right, let's blame the intern game.
Didn't that server endpoint need an upkeep? Didn't they wonder why it's getting all the traffic? Maybe they were DDOSed or something?
Multiple people in that company knew exactly what they were doing.
Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#447Hi 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…
> That said, I want to be clear that we did not and have not collected any personal information here. So, you do collect information just not the kind you would classify as 'personal information'. I wonder if my personal domain with my full name qualifies? There is no way this feature would be created in a company built on privacy considerations. Like, wow!
> So, you do collect information just not the kind you would classify as 'personal information'. I wonder if my personal domain with my full name qualifies?
Considering they have operations in the EU, I would imagine that would fall under what the GDPR considers personal information (https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr-personal-data/), or risk being in breach of it.
Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#448Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#449There'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…
My guess is that DDG is being held to a higher standard because it's the liferaft competitor in a world of Google data harvesting, targeted manipulation and selling customer data.
Most complaining or being heavily critical about DDG are probably already upset to the point of abandonment with other services and they don't want the same trend to happen to this competitor (DDG). This sort of reaction is, IMHO, due to poor diversity of viable competitors.
In our societal structure, competitive options are the only things that keep power in check. I'm personally not entirely convinced you can have a reasonable amount of diverse competition in our economic system and there are some inherent equilibria that we tend to converge on over and over again in a market space (without corresponding massive social equalibria shifts).
If you do have any sort of faith left in our economic system, then you certainly want competitors like DDG to be different and be successful. Even if you don't have much faith, outside of say stringent regulation, supporting these sort of competitors is really the only practical option we have in the current state of affairs.
Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, please. There's a million threads on HN complaining about Google and Facebook. Doesn't even matter if they did something, any post will still have those comments. You can't consider the proportionality of the response by just one thread. It's really quite amazing that when a company that's hitched it's brand entirely to privacy first commits a big privacy faux pas, hides it for a year, and then doubles down on it…
It's because DDG has been shilling on HN for quite a while.
> It's because DDG has been shilling on HN for quite a while.
We’re they caught shilling or something, or are you just upset about just normal promotion?