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DuckDuckGo for Mac

spreadprivacy.com

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Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac

#11

Post by yegg »

uniqueuid wrote: post #3

Sorry, but if it doesn’t have ublock origin, it’s not privacy friendly enough. Please make sure that this extension works, if any (and including advanced functionality such as disabling link auditing, which is no longer an option in safari).

Yes, we are actively evaluating possibilities for add-on support. However, you do not need ublock origin here for privacy protection. Our tracker blocker is powered by our best-in-class Tracker Radar data set (https://github.com/duckduckgo/tracker-radar) which is based on monthly crawls of the web looking for third-party trackers and uncovering the latest tracking techniques. Many academics and companies (including Apple) are now relying on this same data set for research and tracking protection. Similarly our Smarter Encryption (HTTPS upgrading -- https://github.com/duckduckgo/smarter-encryption) is also based on regular web crawls and is many times more comprehensive then anything else out there.

Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac

#12

Post by yegg »

weinzierl wrote: post #5

I'm using DuckDuckGo almost exclusively[1] for years now and I'm pretty happy with it. I don't see much benefit in their browser though. I think their "Privacy Grade" , which is shown very prominently in the browser UI, is more harm than help. It is much too strict and rating everything down is counter to their intention. Is a B site still OK? What about a C, or. B+? If nothing is A, this is just confusing to the use…

DuckDuckGo for Mac (the subject of this post) does not use privacy grades of any kind. We will be moving away for them on all platforms soon, and they were never used for search rankings, just for transparency. On using our app more generally, please see my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31002089

As to what is going on with privacy grades more generally, we never felt comfortable rating a site an A if we couldn't assess their privacy policy, since they could be doing very nefarious things (e.g., selling your data). We tried to work with groups to get more assessments on more sites, but never found a scalable way to do this. We even licensed various ML analysis algorithms for privacy policies, but always found significant issues with them. In the end, I think this stems from the fact that privacy policies themselves are too vague.

Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac

#13

Post by nicoburns »

daniel_iversen wrote: post #2

Their selling points seem to be: - DuckDuckGo for Mac gives you privacy by default - DuckDuckGo for Mac is really fast! - DuckDuckGo for Mac is built for security. .. isn't that just (almost/good enough) Safari these days? Plus with Safari you typically get better battery life. And Apple's monetisation model makes me feel like they'll treat my privacy even better than a search engine. The only reason why sometimes I…

Ad blocking support in Safari isn't great. A lot of the best extensions are a paid subscription, and the free ones seem to be noticeably worse the uBlock Origin.

Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac

#16

Post by lrae »

curvilinear_m wrote: post #7
daniel_iversen wrote: post #2

Their selling points seem to be: - DuckDuckGo for Mac gives you privacy by default - DuckDuckGo for Mac is really fast! - DuckDuckGo for Mac is built for security. .. isn't that just (almost/good enough) Safari these days? Plus with Safari you typically get better battery life. And Apple's monetisation model makes me feel like they'll treat my privacy even better than a search engine. The only reason why sometimes I…

Where do the claims about battery life come from ? I couldn't find any independent review (yet) and I don't see any mention of it on their website.

Not the OP making the claim, but I also looked for recent data and couldn't find any (especially for M1 macs because I just switched to one).

So I just compared them myself for my typical work and media playback (Youtube & Twitch), just anecdotal and totally unscientific though, ranked by MacOs's Energy Impact with the best being 100%.

All with the same extensions (if available, for Safari I used adguard instead of ublock origin).

Safari Technlogy Preview: 100%

Brave Beta: 110%

Orion: 300%

Firefox: 1200% :(

While Safari also used slightly less memory, Brave is the best compromise for me for now. (e2ee sync, chrome extensions and with their crypto shenanigans disabled.)

But again, not scientific at all and of course might differ for people depending on the extensions they use and their browsing behavior.

Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac

#18

Post by mbauman »

curvilinear_m wrote: post #7
daniel_iversen wrote: post #2

Their selling points seem to be: - DuckDuckGo for Mac gives you privacy by default - DuckDuckGo for Mac is really fast! - DuckDuckGo for Mac is built for security. .. isn't that just (almost/good enough) Safari these days? Plus with Safari you typically get better battery life. And Apple's monetisation model makes me feel like they'll treat my privacy even better than a search engine. The only reason why sometimes I…

Where do the claims about battery life come from ? I couldn't find any independent review (yet) and I don't see any mention of it on their website.

I'd expect battery life to be similar (or maybe even better):

> By using your computer’s built-in website rendering engine (the same one Safari uses), and by blocking trackers before they load (unlike all the major browsers), you’ll get really fast browsing.

Re: DuckDuckGo for Mac

#20

Post by bestbuyer__ »

nerdjon wrote: post #8
rasengan wrote: post #4

DDG has been recently under attack due to tampering of search results [1]. Hope they don’t involve politics in their browser! [1] https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-p...

Removing misinformation from Russia is a strange one to attack them for... considering the Russian invasion is about as non partisan of an issue (in the US at least) as I have seen in a long time. Regardless, search engines have to rank content somehow. We need to stop throwing around "politics" when something doesn't fit your particular narrative.

I agree with OP. DuckDuckGo should remain neutral and not censor search results. That was one of their main draws that set them apart from Google.
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