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DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

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Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#61

Post by thrownaway2424 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #53
wcchandler wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until PRISM subpoenas DDG and gets their private keys -- after which they can decrypt the SSL traffic.

Not necessarily possible even with the private keys. If you use an SSL cipher with ephemeral keys, such as the DHE_* or ECDHE_* family of ciphers, then an eavesdropper with a recorded but not MITMed conversation cannot decrypt it even with the server's private SSL key. See http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward-se... for example.

Which of course they do not. Google uses ECDHE_RSA. DDG uses RSA. ixquick, "the world's most private search engine", uses RSA. Bing does not even offer https.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#62

Post by DominikR »

bionsuba wrote: post #55
DominikR wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right, this is clear evidence that Google is evil. In fact, this chain of evidence is of such brilliance and importance for mankind, you should be appointed US Attorney General. We should once and for all end this evil and put all Google employees in prison.

Wow, the snark in this comment is so thick that you could cut it with a knife. How about instead you comment on why he's wrong instead of just being condescending.

Sorry about that, I just wonder how this comment made it to the top given that it has nothing to say about the article.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#63

Post by jonknee »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #61
JoshTriplett wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily possible even with the private keys. If you use an SSL cipher with ephemeral keys, such as the DHE_* or ECDHE_* family of ciphers, then an eavesdropper with a recorded but not MITMed conversation cannot decrypt it even with the server's private SSL key. See http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward-se... for example.

Which of course they do not. Google uses ECDHE_RSA. DDG uses RSA. ixquick, "the world's most private search engine", uses RSA. Bing does not even offer https.

Google does pin their keys in Chrome though, so they know if there is a MITM (and they have, Chrome's certificate pinning led to DigiNotar's downfall). It's a non-scalable hack, but definitely a good one for the largest search engine and a leading email provider to be able to provide.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#64

Post by dnda »

m-r-a-m wrote: post #35
Kiro wrote: post #25

I hope people are aware of the fact that DDG does not have its own index and is using Bing under the hood.

"DuckDuckGo gets its results from over one hundred sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, which are stored in our own index), Yahoo! (through BOSS), WolframAlpha, Bing, and Yandex." [1] [1] http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-s...

For some reason they never say what percentage of (unique)queries are answered by which source though...

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#65

Post by popee »

latch wrote: post #5
annnnd wrote: post #3

If NSA could subpoena Google, they can (and probably do) do the same with DDG. Not that I don't wish them success, but PRISM is not the right reason to switch search engine to them.

DDG logs very litte information...so while NSA can subpoena DDG, there's no data to get. Developers should read "Playing chicken with cat.jpg" [1] which was a response from cperciva [2] to the 37 Signals privacy blunder. It was discussed quite a bit on HN [3] and for me it was a perspective-changing read on privacy. [1] http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/u…

Don't forget link owners. NSA and other bastards can force data centers and link providers without knowledge of DDG. They can split, sniff and store all that data, even if they atm don't know how to decrypt some traffic. One day they will know. It's friking 1984^2

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#66

Post by api »

I've been using it. It's a pretty decent search engine, but doesn't do quite as good a job as Google at prioritizing "canonical" content and finding the right entry points to things. Sometimes it'll land you deep in a relevant site but not at the front page, for example.

I have found one area that it seems to sometimes outshine Google: finding really obscure stuff. Google seems to be biased so hard toward more popular/stable/canonical content that it sometimes seems to overlook things when you really are looking for something weird, or a needle in a haystack. Try using DuckDuckGo to find some ultra-obscure reference.

This is interesting as Google's index is almost certainly much larger... so it's got to be a PageRank artifact.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#67

Post by nsns »

spodek wrote: post #18

Google's strategy is to profit from advertising. It fundamentally benefits from knowing as much about its users as possible. Every tactic it has will always support that strategy or it will risk failure. You can tell its strategy motivates it toward evil (its term, not mine), because its slogan is "Don't be evil." It chose that slogan because it risks being evil, in its own terms. It doesn't need a slogan like "Don't…

Remember, it's a slogan, and slogans only exist to establish a brand. Is Coca-Cola really the "real thing"?

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#68

Post by bad_user »

spodek wrote: post #18

Google's strategy is to profit from advertising. It fundamentally benefits from knowing as much about its users as possible. Every tactic it has will always support that strategy or it will risk failure. You can tell its strategy motivates it toward evil (its term, not mine), because its slogan is "Don't be evil." It chose that slogan because it risks being evil, in its own terms. It doesn't need a slogan like "Don't…

> Who made the slogan?

Paul Buchheit, the creator and original developer of GMail.

He participated in a meeting to establish the company's values and because he found things like “strive for excellence" to be bullshit, he wanted something unusual that would actually mean something. He chose "Don't be evil", because it was funny, it was a jab at Google's competitors and it was something that would be difficult to pull out.

Reference, straight from the horse's mouth: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-16-n55.html

> It chose that slogan because it risks being evil, in its own terms

No, it was mostly a half-serious joke.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#69

Post by bad_user »

ronaldx wrote: post #44
gyardley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever you feel about Google's actions, there's no need to concoct elaborate stories around and speculative theories about the origin of Google's 'don't be evil' slogan. You can look it up. According to http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-16-n55.html , the 'don't be evil' slogan came from Paul Buchheit, who was brand-new to the company when he proposed it at a corporate-values brainstorming meeting. This meeting…

I agree with the parent commenter: the fact that "don't be evil" was adopted suggests strongly that there is a motivation to be evil that needed to be overcome (and that users could identify with). The company storytelling that goes along with the slogan doesn't matter, and nor does it matter that it's intended mainly as a jab at competitors in the same industry .

Any company, person or organization has the potential to be evil. That's a truism that doesn't bring any value to the conversation.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#70

Post by Revisor »

craigching wrote: post #56
senthilnayagam wrote: post #27

I changed my default search engine on safari to DDG, am I happy, no but willing to give them a chance and also using other search sources(github) for my purposes

On mobile safari you can't change the search engine (that I know of), so I've switched to the Mercury browser which does allow me to use DDG. I'm actually quite happy with Mercury, it's a snappy little browser with a good feature set!

You can change the search engine if you liberate/jailbreak your device.
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