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Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

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Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#121

Post by jolmg »

3xblah wrote: post #120

If the user submits a GET request to DDG from the commandline with Javascript disabled, then all results links are prefixed with the address of a DDG server, e.g., https://example.com becomes https://duckduckgo.com/l/uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com Whatever the reasons may be for this decision, it allows DDG to track all links that the user follows from the results page. That is no better than Google. It is not a priv…

> Whatever the reasons may be for this decision, it allows DDG to track all links that the user follows from the results page. That is no better than Google. It is not a privacy improvement in that regard.

It's meant so that the sites you click on can't see your search queries via the Referer HTTP header.

You can turn that off in DDG's settings[1] under the privacy tab. It's the "Redirect" switch. They explain more about it[2]. Basically, it's a privacy choice they give you between preventing sites you visit from seeing your search queries or preventing DDG from seeing what you clicked on.

If you want, you can prevent both by enabling their settings option to use POST instead of GET in their search. Then you can disable the redirect and the sites won't be able to see your search query from Referer, because it would have been passed through the request body instead of URL parameters. However, that's going to prevent you from being able to have your searches in your browser history.

EDIT: I now note why you mentioned javascript and why the Referer option talks about being needed on old browsers. It seems that when javascript is enabled, they do something else to ensure that Referer doesn't leak search queries without passing info on what you clicked on to DDG. That means that, by default on a typical browser, both leaks are prevented. That's pretty neat.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/settings#

[2] https://duck.co/help/results/rduckduckgocom

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#122

Post by webo »

I can’t tell if everyone here is serious when they say they haven’t looked back.

Google knowledge graph is years ahead of DDG. Average person does not want to click through results, s/he just wants the answer. Compare these queries in Google vs. ddg:

  - nba scores
  - 2018 super bowl
  - lakers roster
  - movies in theatres
  - game of thrones cast
  - $aapl
  - where is my phone
  - 2019 thanksgiving
etc

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#125

Post by rlue »

3xblah wrote: post #120

If the user submits a GET request to DDG from the commandline with Javascript disabled, then all results links are prefixed with the address of a DDG server, e.g., https://example.com becomes https://duckduckgo.com/l/uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com Whatever the reasons may be for this decision, it allows DDG to track all links that the user follows from the results page. That is no better than Google. It is not a priv…

Here it is with piping so you don't have to litter your working directory:

    curl -s https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=example.com | grep -m1 "'result-link'"

    curl -sd "q=example.com" https://duckduckgo.com/lite/ | grep -m1 "'result-link'"

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#126

Post by jolmg »

webo wrote: post #122

I can’t tell if everyone here is serious when they say they haven’t looked back. Google knowledge graph is years ahead of DDG. Average person does not want to click through results, s/he just wants the answer. Compare these queries in Google vs. ddg: - nba scores - 2018 super bowl - lakers roster - movies in theatres - game of thrones cast - $aapl - where is my phone - 2019 thanksgiving etc

If you want to help break a monopoly, you'll have to bear with not having all the features only a monopoly can provide.

Scrolling a bit or even clicking on "More results" is not that big of an inconvenience for me to completely drop them. I will admit though that when a search fails for me, I may at times check the same search query at Google, but I now use Google for like 10% of my searches or so.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#127

Post by SuoDuanDao »

webo wrote: post #122

I can’t tell if everyone here is serious when they say they haven’t looked back. Google knowledge graph is years ahead of DDG. Average person does not want to click through results, s/he just wants the answer. Compare these queries in Google vs. ddg: - nba scores - 2018 super bowl - lakers roster - movies in theatres - game of thrones cast - $aapl - where is my phone - 2019 thanksgiving etc

Perhaps the average person is not on hacker news.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#128

Post by aphextron »

3xblah wrote: post #120

If the user submits a GET request to DDG from the commandline with Javascript disabled, then all results links are prefixed with the address of a DDG server, e.g., https://example.com becomes https://duckduckgo.com/l/uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com Whatever the reasons may be for this decision, it allows DDG to track all links that the user follows from the results page. That is no better than Google. It is not a priv…

>Whatever the reasons may be for this decision, it allows DDG to track all links that the user follows from the results page. That is no better than Google. It is not a privacy improvement in that regard.

I don't think that DDG is trying to have independently auditable level of privacy guarantees. What they are selling is trust. The trust that major tech companies have squandered over the last decade. I trust a couple guys sitting in an office in Pennsylvania somewhere way more than the faceless behemoth that is Google at this point. Who knows if that trust is worthwhile, or if things won't end up going the same way, but I'm on their side for now.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#129

Post by kelnos »

webo wrote: post #122

I can’t tell if everyone here is serious when they say they haven’t looked back. Google knowledge graph is years ahead of DDG. Average person does not want to click through results, s/he just wants the answer. Compare these queries in Google vs. ddg: - nba scores - 2018 super bowl - lakers roster - movies in theatres - game of thrones cast - $aapl - where is my phone - 2019 thanksgiving etc

I can't say I haven't looked back; occasionally I'll fall back to Google when DDG is having trouble finding what I want to find. Even then, it's certainly less than 10% of the time (maybe even less than 5%), and I find when I have to do that, Google's results aren't super high quality either (though most of the time the quality is just better enough that it turned out to be useful to have the Google fallback).

As for just "getting the answer", I suspect you're right most of the time, but I really don't mind clicking through the first few results links to see the answer. Figuring out the best answer and putting it in-line with the search results is a nice-to-have for me, but certainly not essential.

Also note that I'm making a trade-off here: lower search result quality in return for not having my search history tracked. For many people, I imagine they don't care about their privacy as much and will make the opposite trade-off. That's fine; I'm just glad we have good enough options so people can make that decision and not be forced one way or the other.

Re: Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)

#130

Post by kelnos »

tombert wrote: post #79

I love DDG (and have been using it as my primary search engine for about six months) but I feel like the hacker community (including me) forgets that DDG is a for-profit corporation, and that at some level posting these kinds of links is more or less the same as just giving them free advertising.

That's hardly unusual for HN; there are plenty of legitimate posts here every day that promote products (free and paid).

I think products that tend to align with hacker values (transparency, privacy, etc.) are fair game.

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