I'm curious how DuckDuckGo makes money. They don't charge us for search results, and they don't use our information to target ads. How do they make money to run their operations?
Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
71–80 of 166 posts
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#72And there are indeed a few solutions that actually grant you partial relief from the pains of online tracking. First, switch your search engine, email and other major services where your personal information is heavily tracked to good private alternatives. Second, add EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere plugin to your browser, which will encrypt web site connections where possible. Third, add EFF’s Privacy Badger plugin to your b…
The "based on ABP code" apply only For the Chromium/Chrome version
"For the Firefox version of Privacy Badger, we also eschewed the ABP engine in favor of something we wrote ourselves. Don't get me wrong, ABP is a great tool and we learned a lot from its code - but we wanted something as lean and performant as possible....."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7686396
also ublock makes ABP, Ghostery & Disconnect redundant. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-and-other...
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, consider "Hey, tomorrow is angersock's 34th birthday! We're organizing a surprise party in his hometown of jonestown!". Now, they've given away my age, birthdate, and where I was born. That's the sort of information that, while private and something I don't give away, they know and give away without thinking.
Who is it you don't want to have that information? The government already knows (it's part of your SSN information), and any private company that cares will just make you give that info to them as part of the cost of service. You'll do it too, because you don't want to be unable to drive or have a mortgage.
I know about those entities, though--and I know that, in the case of private companies, they're probably going to share it (and we can make laws to that effect).
My original point is that those protections won't apply when just crawling through friends and acquaintances mentioning things.
EDIT:
For another example, consider "Thank God, my friend angersock had a car accident today but only scratched the bumper". That's something I don't want as public knowledge, and that my insurance provider could (theoretically) use to raise my rates.
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try RequestPolicy. It blocks all requests to domains other than the host's, unless you whitelist them. It comes with optional whitelists you can use for popular sites. On one hand, it's cumbersome, requiring you to whitelist some requests and reload when you visit a new webpage (most sites require a CDN at least). On the other, it's easy to use and good security.
Additionally, try RequestPolicyContinued[0] because the original RequestPolicy dev has stopped maintaining it. [0] http://requestpolicycontinued.github.io
Or try Policeman https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/policeman/
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#75I've also noticed the quality of DuckDuckGo search results has been steadily improving, especially over the past year. I would encourage anyone who tried it and went back to another search engine to consider giving DuckDuckGo another shot--you may be pleasantly surprised!
Actually, I've noticed that DGG is way overdoing guessing. More often than not I get results that are only similar to the search query in some way instead of actually what I'm looking for. This has been getting worse over time for me.
Of course, because DDG can't build a profile of you, it would have to resort to some guessing.
For example, if you search for "python", it would have to guess whether you are a programmer, or a biologist, in order to present the most relevant results. And of course, Google already has all this information...
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not particularly looking for a debate today; but this seems to be a disagreement of terms when using the word "provable". Just because a polynomial time algorithm can not be constructed to distinguish a single record does not mean private information can not be derived. I still would prefer a choice in the matter - a required small check box that says "record my data" or "do not record my data" XOR "erase my dat…
They define what they mean by the word private, and then prove their mechanisms satisfy that definition. It's not a disagreement about the word "provable," it's that you don't agree that their definition of privacy is a good definition of privacy. That's fine, but your reason seems suspicious. If they could determine any information about you, then such an algorithm would fail if your data were not collected in the f…
> That's fine, but your reason seems suspicious.
I prefer to avoid living my life in a fishbowl.
> provably private
This does not have a mathematics definition. Private means not accessible to anyone aside from the owner. That is something that is provably private.
> information theoretic guarantee
This sounds like hand waving to get rid of actual concerns.
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who is it you don't want to have that information? The government already knows (it's part of your SSN information), and any private company that cares will just make you give that info to them as part of the cost of service. You'll do it too, because you don't want to be unable to drive or have a mortgage.
I know about those entities, though--and I know that, in the case of private companies, they're probably going to share it (and we can make laws to that effect). My original point is that those protections won't apply when just crawling through friends and acquaintances mentioning things. EDIT: For another example, consider "Thank God, my friend angersock had a car accident today but only scratched the bumper". That'…
Also, revealing your birthdate to the general public could help people convince your bank they're you, or bust a pseudonym that you had been trying to keep separate from your legal name.
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of surveillance is going on there? What kind of experiments are happening there?
They psychologically torture and harass people to produce false confessions or force people to do things against their will. Think what happened to Aaron Swartz, but on crack... Chicago, I'm sure is no different... http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-polic...
So you couldn't provide any real source, instead linking to something about the Chicago police. What's the Georgia Tech connection?
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#79I've also noticed the quality of DuckDuckGo search results has been steadily improving, especially over the past year. I would encourage anyone who tried it and went back to another search engine to consider giving DuckDuckGo another shot--you may be pleasantly surprised!
I just read Gabriel's post, and I pretty much agree (and do) with what he says. Due to these shared believes I've been using DDG quite a bit, I even deleted the Google search app from my phone, and instead been using DDG's iOS app as my default mobile search engine. However, every time I use DDG it hurts a bit. The quality of the results are very far behind from that of Google's. I many times end up doing a Google se…
I'm just curious if when you say incognito mode that you are using Chrome? I am assuming that changing the default search engine from Google avoids sending partially typed searches to Google, and the privacy policy seems to state that limited personally identifying data is still transmitted but I'm still somehow a bit wary of chrome. Is it fairly substantiated that other than having a different search engine and not signing in, that chrome behaves in a trustworthy fashion? There is still the odd translation suggestion and double click definition that I suppose would also have to be turned off. (From their privacy policy they claim no identifying data is sent along with these requests but the IP alone is an obvious identifier)
Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely
#80I'm curious how DuckDuckGo makes money. They don't charge us for search results, and they don't use our information to target ads. How do they make money to run their operations?