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Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

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Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#91

Post by ncmncm »

GuB-42 wrote: post #78
ncmncm wrote: post #55

There was a posting on HN not long ago warning that DDG was run by spammers, and that the "privacy" focus is purely a marketing ploy. This should be predictable on the basis that it is a free service, making you the product, and somebody else , therefore, the customer. It is hard to know what else one can do to get useful search functionality. It has been a long time since Google dropped any emphasis on usefulness. A…

Privacy and ads/spam are different things. DDG has ads based on your search query, that's how they make money. The difference is that they don't profile you, at least that's what they say. You can spam and respect people privacy, just by not looking who you are spamming. And yes, "privacy" is a marketing ploy for anyone who is not Google. As for general purpose search engines, there are only two: Google and Bing, mos…

"At least that's what they say" is exactly what is at issue. You offer no reason to believe what they say.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#93

Post by unknownaccount »

candiddevmike wrote: post #28
aendruk wrote: post #2

Some unintended consequences: > This change caused my chromium browser to report that it's being managed by my "organization". I thought that my machine was somehow compromised. This is terrifying! I wound up deleting my entire chromium profile before I discovered that the root cause was this DuckDuckGo config change. https://bugs.debian.org/956012

Sounds like a Chromium bug, not a Debian bug--it's an insidious way to keep Google search as the default.

The only bug here is the changing of the search engine to a sketchy website without user input or consent.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#94

Post by pb7 »

kornhole wrote: post #86
pb7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has hundreds of millions of wealthy customers. Debian does not.

They have a few though. Certainly they don't have captive users who only install what they are allowed to and use the default settings. Linux users are probably the worst target market for advertisers.

>Linux users are probably the worst target market for advertisers.

Yes but not for the reason you are imagining. I can think of a few things in common between everyone I've ever known to use Linux for personal use and general consumerism to improve quality of life is not one of them.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#95

Post by isaacremuant »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #36
bla3 wrote: post #13

DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results. Why not pick something truly open, like search.marginalia.nu?

Flattering. Unfortunately my search engine is far away, both in terms of functionality and hardware capacity from being able to deal with that. Maybe some day, who knows, but not yet. Even if I'm destined to make the Linux of search engines, we're metaphorically living in 1992 or so. Would be funny though because it's both developed on a Debian workstation and hosted on a Debian server.

After DDG decided they would censor material they considered misinformation from Russia I went out search engine shopping and I'm using brave search. I value transparency and fairness and can make my own mind about things (I remember when being against the Iraq or Lybia wars made you a terrorist sympsthizer).

Do you have any stance there? (I'm not saying you should have one or agree with mine, just curious. Every search engine might have its time and place).

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#96

Post by canadaduane »

jonas-w wrote: post #16

Best approach i think is, they way "ungoogled-chromium" does it. They don't enforce organization policies, but they set the default config to "no search" and then leave it up to the user to change it.

This is only useful for people who know what a search engine is. (Seriously, many people equate "googling" = "search engine", and don't know there is a general category of this thing). Unless there are two big bold buttons on start-up--one that says "Use Google for Search" and the other that says "Use Duck Duck Go for Search"--it would appear broken to them. Even then, almost everyone would pick "Google" just for name brand recognition.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#97

Post by no_time »

unknownaccount wrote: post #92

Can someone please explain why we are supposed to trust DDG? Isnt it just a random website that popped up out of nowhere claiming to be private yet no audit has ever been conducted which substantiated those claims?

You aren't supposed to. Even if you assume they lie in every sentence about their data collection, with their current setup it would be much harder for them to build a valuable shadow profile about you.

They haven't been caught running fingerprinting scripts yet and they dont have an account system to tie to your searches. At best they could use your ip to build a shadow profile and thats wildly inaccurate in our mostly ipv4 world.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#98

Post by dchest »

kyrra wrote: post #43

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on chrome or anything related. Many companies put out free software to drive people towards their products, and Chrome with Google Search seems to be one of those. As many know, improving and maintaining Chrome is not free, and having Google Search being a default is one part of what helps pay for this work. Yes, this is Google, yes, this is likely a tiny drop in the bucket…

Nah, it's just a fork of KHTML.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#99

Post by unknownaccount »

no_time wrote: post #97
unknownaccount wrote: post #92

Can someone please explain why we are supposed to trust DDG? Isnt it just a random website that popped up out of nowhere claiming to be private yet no audit has ever been conducted which substantiated those claims?

You aren't supposed to. Even if you assume they lie in every sentence about their data collection, with their current setup it would be much harder for them to build a valuable shadow profile about you. They haven't been caught running fingerprinting scripts yet and they dont have an account system to tie to your searches. At best they could use your ip to build a shadow profile and thats wildly inaccurate in our mos…

How do you know what server-side profiling occurs or does not occur? There is no way to know that. DDG gives people a completely misplaced and false sense of security, when they are just as easily comprimisable/corruptable/subpoenable/susceptible to NSLs, EDRs and secret court orders as any other company.

And I disagree with your premise that it's particularly difficult to link a persons IP to their real world identity. There are organized fraud gangs who have it down to a science. know exactly what dept. of the ISP to call, what to say, etc. Basically if someone knows your IP and your ISP account is registered in your name it's game over.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#100

Post by dec0dedab0de »

unknownaccount wrote: post #92

Can someone please explain why we are supposed to trust DDG? Isnt it just a random website that popped up out of nowhere claiming to be private yet no audit has ever been conducted which substantiated those claims?

It is a legit company based in Pennsylvania, not some random website. Their privacy policy explicitly states they do not collect user info. If they are caught doing it anyway they could be open to legal action. While they may be lying, at least it's better than other search engines where collecting data is explicit and built into their business model.

edit: I should have just down-voted and moved on.

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