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PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

venturebeat.com

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Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#41

Post by jackpirate »

adamtj wrote: post #32
lurkinggrue wrote: post #20

Not that this is going to help. The NSA is probably tapping the fiber at the ISP's backbone in front of Google. Why do you think it is called PRISM? It's probably named for the way they are splitting the fiber and recording everything.

In the case of DDG, that would be difficult. DDG uses SSL. If you make a mistake and type "duckduckgo.com" instead of " https://duckduckgo.com" , it will automatically redirect you to the secure page. Unfortunately, that redirect gives a man-in-the-middle and opportunity to hijack your connection, even with SSL; however, that's tricky enough that its hard to imagine anyone pulling it off without ever being noticed.

>Unfortunately, that redirect gives a man-in-the-middle and opportunity to hijack your connection, even with SSL

As long as the SSL cert isn't compromised, I don't see how this is possible.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#42

Post by betterunix »

oneye wrote: post #17
jafaku wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because look at the logo and the design, that duck is cool! And it says it's private! /s

Or because their entire business differentiation from the beginning has been privacy. This does not mean that it is not compromised, of course. But its why people would believe it isn't compromised. And its a much better reason than your sarcastic imitation.

"Or because their entire business differentiation from the beginning has been privacy."

The same is true of Hushmail. How did that work out?

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#43

Post by TylerE »

oneye wrote: post #17
jafaku wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because look at the logo and the design, that duck is cool! And it says it's private! /s

Or because their entire business differentiation from the beginning has been privacy. This does not mean that it is not compromised, of course. But its why people would believe it isn't compromised. And its a much better reason than your sarcastic imitation.

I can't take their privacy stuff quite seriously, considering they are partnered with Microsoft.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#44

Post by hkmurakami »

suyash wrote: post #31

And as far as browser is concerned, I would recommend go with Firefox vs Google or Safari. Mozilla is a non profit and I feel I can trust it the most.

I take it you mean Firefox over Chrome or Safari?

(I agree. The only thing I use Chrome for is Facebook)

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#45

Post by swombat »

oinksoft wrote: post #13

I ceased using Google search except as a last resort when this story broke, and I had no idea what I had been missing out on with DDG: Excellent keyboard navigation . Also, DDG's results compared to a year ago are night-and-day. It seems to listen to my keywords better than Google did too, a growing annoyance I had. If you haven't, you really should try out DDG for a week.

I've done the same. Also switched to Firefox with full Adblock and tracking bugs blocking.

It's not much, but at least I'm no longer leaving a huge slimy trail behind me online.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#46

Post by betterunix »

elorant wrote: post #25
rednukleus wrote: post #2

Glad to see them succeeding, but personally the privacy of my web searches doesn't bother me - as long as they aren't being passed along with personally identifying information. I'm far more worried about emails, messaging, video, storage etc. Can someone explain to me (or point me in the direction of something that explains) what Google and Bing store in terms of tracking when you are not logged in? Obviously you ca…

TOR is not that safe. If the exit node is compromised you’re f*cked for good. As for Google the thing is that they’re also an advertising network so basically they track you all around the web.

"TOR is not that safe. If the exit node is compromised you’re f*cked for good."

Not if you are using TLS, which you should be using regardless of Tor.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#48

Post by jaryd »

aacook wrote: post #16

This is great news for DuckDuckGo and I'm all for it, however, DuckDuckGo isn't completely private right? From what I see, DuckDuckGo obtains much of its data from 3rd parties, such as Bing/Microsoft and Yahoo. http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-s... "While our indexes are getting bigger, we do not expect to be wholly independent from third-parties. Bing and Google each spend hundreds of milli…

While we do use 3rd parties to fulfill some of our organic results we always make those calls from our machines. We never pass along IP addresses. This means that while our other sources might see your queries, they are not tied with PII (personally identifiable information).

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#50

Post by riquito »

jpdoctor wrote: post #8

Why would anyone believe that DuckDuckGo isn't already penetrated?

It's a fair question, I'm ashamed by the snarky answers.

If Google can't oppose the NSA in installing backdoors (by the way, this has to be demonstrated), DuckDuckGo can't oppose them neither.

Best luck to the team of DuckDuckGo, it's a nice project.

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