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Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

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Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#101

Post by fpgaminer »

justcommenting wrote: post #2

I'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've had this question for awhile ... What is the advantage to using DuckDuckGo, with respect to privacy? All I've found is that they say privacy is important and that they don't track users. But I see no way for them to prove that. So you still have to trust them not to spy on you. Perhaps on the whole that is better than alternatives. "Google is definitely spying on me" versus "DuckDuckGo might be spying on me". Is that the only difference, or am I missing something?

If that's the only difference, isn't Google-over-Tor a better option? Known privacy with world-class search results?

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#102

Post by Retra »

mikerichards wrote: post #82

Obama's natural inclination is to never to "regulate" the power of government, but to regulate industry. Government's intrusion of our privacy is the much bigger problem, but Obama just says "look over there at those big internet companies, forget about the NSA, CIA, IRS and other numerous government agencies and unaccountable bureaucrats that want to snoop into and control your private lives. Forget that the governm…

Obama is not a member of congress. He doesn't write laws or regulations.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#103

Post by stcredzero »

mirimir wrote: post #83

I believe that prudent compartmentalization is the best way to control tracking and reclaim privacy. Each compartment comprises interests, relationships and activities that you want observers to track and interrelate. For compartments where privacy is essential, it's best to use pseudonyms, and to avoid cross-linking with public compartments. Compartments are isolated in VMs, with separate network connectivity using…

Each compartment comprises interests, relationships and activities that you want observers to track and interrelate.

Excellent! There are a lot of historical precedents for technology enabling intermediation! Such intermediation comes with power, which does need to be tempered with some regulation. (The minimum possible, due to regulatory capture, of course.)

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#104

Post by oconnore »

j2kun wrote: post #84
oconnore wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a false dichotomy: most of the time data collection and analysis does not preserve privacy. In all cases, you can't guarantee that. You also didn't respond to this: > Furthermore, even if a company was using differential privacy to anonymize data between the collection and the processing step, there is no way to prove that the data is being handled appropriately before and during the collection step. Also, t…

You also can't prove that someone won't poison your soup before, during, or after it was prepared from raw ingredients. But you don't claim either to avoid all soup or die. This is because you can give very good guarantees that if the correct process is followed then that won't happen. This is pretty much how we get by in all areas of life. Trust is a default and it has to be for society to function. If we can back u…

Your chef doesn't have a large monetary incentive to poison your soup. Would you eat the food if he did?

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#105

Post by murbard2 »

stcredzero wrote: post #100

Pretty much all technologies have facets where markets break down and require some form of corrective regulation to make things work the way we want them to. No! Nooooooo! Say it isn't so! The market is a magical infallible oracle of laissez-faire goodness! (That snidely said, the market is absolutely a marvellous thing in precisely the contexts where situations are so complex that centralized control is hopeless and…

In which category do you think the question of how privacy should be managed between websites and their customers, across all kind of business models, all types of customers, and all sorts of data fit? A complex situation that needs context aware distributed decision, or a problem simple enough that regulation can unambiguously help?

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#106

Post by jff »

TruthWillFree wrote: post #90
jff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you couldn't provide any real source, instead linking to something about the Chicago police. What's the Georgia Tech connection?

http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems

Still not seeing any G.T. connection. Mind taking off the foil hat and beaming the info to my mind or something?

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#107

Post by jaryd »

schoen wrote: post #43
yegg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specific examples you're willing to share really help us improve. Feel free to send them to us at inbound at duckduckgo.

I found DDG commonly does worse than Google on long natural-language questions, especially ones that are mainly made up of common words, and also seems to have more trouble than Google with automatically splitting queries into relevant noun phrases (like if a query included "vegetarian restaurant new york", I expect Google more reliably to decompose that into (vegetarian restaurant) (new york) than DDG). But I'll kee…

We've actually been working on improving relevancy for queries like your example ("vegetarian restaurant new york") -- check it out!

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vegetarian+restaurant+new+york

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#108

Post by riking »

zipperhead wrote: post #44
falcolas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personally found that a hosts file can reduce the need for a bunch of those addons - it can block not only ads, but also many forms of tracking. I've found it very refreshing when surfing the web. For reference, I use: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

I've thought of using hosts file vs. plugins but have never really made the switch. I'm a bit concerned that I'll run into cases like a website is broken due to a hosts file setting, and I can't easily bypass it like I can with a plugin. Do you ever run into situations like this?

µBlock can import hosts files, and it has an off-switch :)

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#109

Post by falcolas »

zipperhead wrote: post #44
falcolas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personally found that a hosts file can reduce the need for a bunch of those addons - it can block not only ads, but also many forms of tracking. I've found it very refreshing when surfing the web. For reference, I use: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

I've thought of using hosts file vs. plugins but have never really made the switch. I'm a bit concerned that I'll run into cases like a website is broken due to a hosts file setting, and I can't easily bypass it like I can with a plugin. Do you ever run into situations like this?

The only breakage I have ever noticed is the occasional site which has about 30 or so "broken image" placeholders surrounding the content. Otherwise, I don't even notice its presence.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#110

Post by falcolas »

stcredzero wrote: post #93
zipperhead wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought of using hosts file vs. plugins but have never really made the switch. I'm a bit concerned that I'll run into cases like a website is broken due to a hosts file setting, and I can't easily bypass it like I can with a plugin. Do you ever run into situations like this?

Are there any utilities for management of the hosts file?

I've never used one aside from a text editor. Plain text file with whitespace delimited items; about as simple as it gets.
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