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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

#121

Post by tremon »

unknownaccount wrote: post #99
no_time wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 identi…

Even if they do server-side profiling, they can only track you on duckduckgo.com. Last I checked, DDG did not also own an analytics service that has infested half the world's websites.

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

#122

Post by yegg »

torpid wrote: post #82
yegg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that due to own my unfortunate phrasing, how our news results rankings work have been highly misinterpreted since then. I subsequently put out a clarification thread ( https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1515635886855233537 ) and then we (DuckDuckGo) made a help page to explain how our news rankings actually work. I suggest anyone interested check it out (it’s short): https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help…

You still haven't convinced me, or many others who used your service to the contrary, and your explanation like in this thread here doesn't match what you are preaching. https://twitter.com/pkm_inc/status/1515677462251945986

I’m honestly not sure what you are referring to as the contrary or contradiction here. The referenced help page is the most complete explanation of how our news rankings work. Put another way, what would it take to convince you?

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

#123

Post by fabianhjr »

DannyBee wrote: post #106
candiddevmike wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Uh, no? This is managed policy, and this is a 100% good way of letting the user know that someone else has control of their settings Just because Debian thinks that they are doing the right thing, they are in fact, controlling the user's settings through a policy It's just telling you that, as it should. The notion that it has anything to do with keeping search the default or not is like, such a silly assumption i do…

> Uh, no? This is managed policy, and this is a 100% good way of letting the user know that someone else has control of their settings

So Google's defaults are "un-managed" and imply no control over users' settings?

Why shouldn't the Google built Chrome binaries display the same warning and a binary from a specific linux distro should?

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

#124

Post by cmeacham98 »

ncmncm wrote: post #120
zaphar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can find no actual evidence that DDG is run by spammers. This does not strike me as credible.

I can find no evidence that DDG is not run by spammers. Any claim that it is not is clearly what would demand solid evidence.

That's not how the burden of proof works here.

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

#125

Post by aendruk »

lohfu wrote: post #114
aendruk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

how can you be sure? feigning verity isnt helping anything; at best you will not get downvoted.

People sometimes absentmindedly misspeak. Either that happened and you can politely s/Firefox/browser/ so that the comment reads as a reasonable, even insightful contribution to the discussion, or the comment is utter nonsense and you can feel smug that you’re not as stupid as they must be. Granting the former interpretation is the more charitable option.

You should also understand that “Surely…” doesn’t mean the same thing as “I am sure”. “Surely…” is a plea for sanity.

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

#126

Post by zzo38computer »

I think that they will need to fork the web browsers and maintain the forks instead of the originals, in order to make improvements. This is one of them but is not only one. To actually make the web browsers good, will require further changes (sometimes involving adding stuff back in that was removed in older versions, or removing some of the newly added stuff while keeping some of it).

However, I would prefer the default to be "no search", and to only search if the user explicitly specifies which search engine to use. (This does not necessarily mean that Debian has to do this; it only means that it is what would be my own preference. Some other people will agree with me, although some people will disagree.)

Regardless of the default settings though (sometimes different default settings might be suitable due to the distribution; in this case it doesn't matter, but for some settings of some programs, it will matter), the end user should have the opportunity to change all of the settings.

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

#127

Post by tremon »

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…

it's taking away potential revenue from Google.

Wow. Yes, that's how competition works. Are people at the tech monopolists really that entitled that they consider the entire world's purse strings theirs to control?

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

#128

Post by encryptluks2 »

fabianhjr wrote: post #123
DannyBee wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, no? This is managed policy, and this is a 100% good way of letting the user know that someone else has control of their settings Just because Debian thinks that they are doing the right thing, they are in fact, controlling the user's settings through a policy It's just telling you that, as it should. The notion that it has anything to do with keeping search the default or not is like, such a silly assumption i do…

> Uh, no? This is managed policy, and this is a 100% good way of letting the user know that someone else has control of their settings So Google's defaults are "un-managed" and imply no control over users' settings? Why shouldn't the Google built Chrome binaries display the same warning and a binary from a specific linux distro should?

Because those are the default browser settings. As explained, there is another more appropriate way to change default settings for distributions. The way Debian did it is more for enterprise management.

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

#129

Post by unknownaccount »

yegg wrote: post #116
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?

Recently the National Advertising Division looked into our privacy claims and found them supported, see https://bbbprograms.org/media-center/newsroom/duckduckgo-pri... & https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/privacy-protection/12106... Also a lot of what we do is open source on GitHub. We recently put out a help page detailing or web tracking protections that link to a lot of the relevant repositories: https://help.duc…

Those aren't proper audits. And again, bringing up the fact that it's open source is a meaningless piece of information since there is no way to verify it's the same software code on production. It only serves to trick the average user who doesn't understand how web servers work into trusting your service more.

The best thing you could do, if you actually care about privacy and not just $$$, is to open-source the entire search index db and accompanying webserver software, making it easy for users to setup their own local instance of DDG which is actually auditable. Additionally, posting a notice on-site which notifies your users that their searches may be recorded and tracked in spite of what the privacy policy says(due to the USA jurisdiction of the company making it susceptible to National Security Letters and secret gag orders) would be the right thing to do.

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

#130

Post by sascha_sl »

brnt wrote: post #41
sascha_sl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting that there is a policy is no bug, but maybe there should be a way to signify that it's customized by your software vendor (i.e. signed and keys are compiled in) and that it just sets the default search engine. Chromium does change the message to "This device is managed by " if attached to Chrome Enterprise.

Being "managed by" and loading a policy config do not equate in meaning, unless we let PR departments redefine words. Moreover, defaulting to Google is also a policy.

The intent behind policy loading in Chrome is to allow an MDM to configure the browser, not for distros to not write a real patch.
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