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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

#81

Post by betterunix »

clicks wrote: post #6
theGimp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, DDG claims not to keep a record of your searches, so a subpoena would not provide anyone with much information.

Yep, exactly. Now, this makes me wonder: What could be an equivalent implementation for e-mails. An e-mail host that encourages immediate download, totally deletes e-mail contents, deletes logs of any sort, etc. when you delete messages?

You mean the way things used to be before GMail showed up? Back when we had mail quotas? Back when 10MB of email storage was the norm?

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#82

Post by Hannan »

primaryobjects wrote: post #78
Yrlec wrote: post #19

I am one of those that have changed to DDG after the scandals. So far it feels like I find my results as quickly as I used to do with Google. One nice feature that I just found: under the Privacy tab at https://duckduckgo.com/settings you can change so that the query is sent as a HTTP POST parameter instead of a GET parameter. That way your ISP can't find out what you are searching for (assuming you have https enable…

SSL encrypts everything in the url after the ? so GET or POST matters little.

Not just the query string values, it encrypts the path to the resource (and headers, etc) as well. However, another HNer pointed me to an article on side-channel attacks which is helpful to keep in mind when considering privacy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5492338

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#83

Post by mileszs »

nhangen wrote: post #72

Really wanted to like DDG, and went as far as changing default SE for Chrome this week, but I couldn't hack it for more than a few days. The results page is very difficult on the eyes, and the design hierarchy is very rough. Google is just light years ahead. I'm going back to Google with Incognito and AdBlock for now.

I am still having a hard time with it. However, you might try the "Lite" version: https://duckduckgo.com/lite/

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#84

Post by anoncow »

nhangen wrote: post #72

Really wanted to like DDG, and went as far as changing default SE for Chrome this week, but I couldn't hack it for more than a few days. The results page is very difficult on the eyes, and the design hierarchy is very rough. Google is just light years ahead. I'm going back to Google with Incognito and AdBlock for now.

I tried to switch back to Google because it didn't feel the same to a part of my brain, even though I didn't feel search result quality was an issue. So I changed keyword.url(firefox) to duckduckgo. It doesn't feel that bad now, and when I feel I am missing out I visit google.com manually.

Google has great results, and even with the current fiasco, I do trust google somewhat. But we don't have good alternatives to Google and bing, which isn't a good thing. So I am trying to help ddg out by using their service.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#86

Post by gesman »

Brown cookie for the effort, but i have exactly 0% of hits coming from duckduckgo to any of my sites.

It's good alternative search engine though as Google becoming increasingly opinionated and rattled by inconsistent changes with never ending improvements to their algorithms.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#87

Post by Zergy »

I used GDG for a while and there is one feature that it doesn't have that Google has that makes it very hard to convert. I can google "soap" and the first result is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP. If I GDG "soap" the results are all about bars of soap.

Nothing I have tried even comes close to competing with Google Search trained fror me when it comes to search relevance.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#88

Post by nhangen »

myko wrote: post #79
nhangen wrote: post #72

Really wanted to like DDG, and went as far as changing default SE for Chrome this week, but I couldn't hack it for more than a few days. The results page is very difficult on the eyes, and the design hierarchy is very rough. Google is just light years ahead. I'm going back to Google with Incognito and AdBlock for now.

Are incognito and AdBlock meant to protect against PRISM? I don't quite understand what the point is. Why not just log out if you're still using Google anyway?

Incognito and AdBlock might not protect against Prism, but they protect me from other sites. Logging out is an option as well, which is something I'm considering, though I doubt it matters much since they know me by IP and I use Gmail.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#89

Post by pnathan »

api wrote: post #66

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 popula…

ddg is quite a lot better when you're actually looking for something out there. Google is much better for the 'canonical' stuff.

Re: DuckDuckGo Sees Record Traffic After NSA PRISM Scandal

#90

Post by corin_ »

whunut wrote: post #13
clicks wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pretty awesome. I'm curious: was the privacy focus by the DDG guys always there, or was it pushed after they found it was a nice advertising point? Either way, I think this is a good enough reason for me to finally make the switch.

I remember the first time (about 6 months ago) I took a look at their about page there was a big emphasis on them not tracking your searches, so I think the sentiment has always been there.

DDG launched in 2008, so data from 6 months ago doesn't really speak to whether privacy was a part of the original purpose.
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