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DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

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Re: DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

#51

Post by Retric »

mda wrote: post #46
Retric wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just did a search for tempest on bing, duck duck go, and google, and ddg was closer to google than bing. Which is fairly common, they are each the odd one out on some searches. Though I think google’s personalized search results make it seem very different to some people. Pick something really odd like “Purple car teacup” and google seems to give really bad results. 3 links to amazon, 2 to Pinterest, and 2 to EBay. T…

Try a more complex query. e.g. "difference between wet and dry suit" bing and ddg web site results are almost identical, only ranking differences. Youtube results on the page are identical. Google is quite different. "average temperature of a dog" Again bing ddg very similar, Google completely different. "average lifespan of a domestic cat" "list of medication that has interactions with grapefruit". Just try more com…

“average temperature of a dog“

Bing and ddg are somewhat closer, but far from identical. Include the second page of googles results, and all three have vetinfo.com etc, but bing and google have two links to www.quora.com where ddg doesn’t have any. I only bring that up because of you compare results under the assumption that bing and ddg are identical it’s easy to overstate the similarities.

Re: DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

#52

Post by sct202 »

mrweasel wrote: post #27
ffpip wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any source? They have always avoided the question of how much they were dependent on Bing.

No one has a source for “DuckDuckGo is just Bing” either. We know that they use Bing, but not for what, people have just asserted that DDG is just Bing (or Yandex), but no one seems to be able to provide at source to back up the claim.

We can infer some things about DDG based published data on crawler and bot activity. DDG's index is pretty comparable to both Google and Bing, but their bot is no where to be found in activity stats. So it's pretty reasonable to think that at minimum their index is primarily derived from 3rd parties.

https://deviceatlas.com/blog/most-active-bots-and-crawlers-w... https://www.imperva.com/blog/most-active-good-bots/

In my opinion, I don't think it should matter too much that they might not be crawling for their own index as long as they're reordering the results. But I do think there is some stigma where metasearch engines aren't looked at with as much prestige.

Re: DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

#53

Post by capableweb »

nwah1 wrote: post #36

It is ironic that every new preference meant to enhance privacy only adds more bits of information by which to fingerprint you. But maybe fingerprinting is unavoidable. As far as I understand, to avoid fingerprinting, you would need to not have any browser cache at all.

Yeah, strange that they don't focus on the legalities of the already existing dnt header, and instead added a new "Sec-GPC" header. https://globalprivacycontrol.github.io/gpc-spec/#the-sec-gpc...

Re: DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

#54

Post by chris_f »

lights0123 wrote: post #7
02020202 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they use bing only for some stuff, not as their backend. they will do just fine without bing.

I mean, searching something on DDG and then on Bing gives almost identical results.

A trick I use to identify the source of unknown search results is to compare the SERP to a search engine that I know uses the primary source (usually Bing or Google) indirectly.

So for example, instead of comparing unknown results directly to the Bing SERP, I will compare it to Ecosia's SERP because it is powered by Bing will generally be less manipulated (i.e. closer to what Bing just returns in their API). Bing also adds a lot of other information to their own SERP which they might not make available in their API.

It's definitely not a fingerprint, but the source of organic SERPs are almost always identifiable.

Re: DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

#56

Post by ozten »

“This would provide a key component that’s called for in the California law, which is a simple way for consumers to invoke their right without having to go to each website and find the button,” said Ashkan Soltani, a privacy researcher who helped lead the effort [ as well as the previous DNT effort ]

"The new specification won’t become legally binding until the California attorney general blesses it."

So it seems the started with the Law first, instead of Do not Track which tried to lead with code.

https://www.wired.com/story/global-privacy-control-launches-...

Re: DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

#57

Post by fsflover »

Angeo34 wrote: post #24
fsflover wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just read their privacy policy: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy .

So why do you trust what they say? If Google or MS says it it's irrelevant but if a small company without any supervision says it it's true? It's like ppl saying Telegram is private just because they say so.

> If Google or MS says it it's irrelevant

Google and MS say that they do collect a lot of data. I indeed trust them here... What’s the point?

Re: DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

#59

Post by Dahoon »

esperent wrote: post #23
Angeo34 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never got this logic. If it's about privacy they are obliged to proof that they are private especially with such a backstory. It's like Google saying "yes we are private" and then data share with the entirety of the US gov without any order. Why do you trust DDG did they do anything to earn your trust or is your trust that worthless?

I don't have any particular trust in them. However, they've staked their entire business model on privacy. That would be foolish if their intent is to sell user info, because doing that is unlikely to stay private for long.

Exactly like Startpage.com that then became part of a datamining/harvesting business.

Re: DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort

#60

Post by contingencies »

nwah1 wrote: post #36

It is ironic that every new preference meant to enhance privacy only adds more bits of information by which to fingerprint you. But maybe fingerprinting is unavoidable. As far as I understand, to avoid fingerprinting, you would need to not have any browser cache at all.

It's far from just the browser cache. Consider things like network location, download speed, interaction path, browser parsing edge cases, script enabled, privacy add-ons enabled, etc...
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