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PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

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Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#121

Post by greglindahl »

boomzilla wrote: post #97
jpdoctor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, DDG's results compared to a year ago are night-and-day. Still looks 2nd rate. I replicated one of my last searches (learning rails): rails find if element is in array First hit on google is the stackexchange answer with .include? (which I was spacing-out on) DDG yields the Array docs, which is correct but is a helluva lot of info when I'm looking for a concise answer.

This is most likely that Google has more user behavior data than DDG. If enough people use DDG and click on the StackExchange link for that query (or similar queries), DDG will be able to get that to the top. On the other hand, did DDG just use Bing API, and only Blekko crawls the web? Or do I get my search engines mixed up?

That's correct, blekko does have our own multi-billion page crawl and index. And we're private, too.

Every web search engine depends on one of these indexes: google, bing, blekko, yandex, baidu.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#122

Post by brvs »

bigiain wrote: post #116
kostya-kow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I am running GNU/Linux.

Why do you trust any binaries you've got? Where did your first-use/bootstrapping compiler come from? And even if you wrote your own OS and compiler from the ground up - who wrote your BIOS? Your network card firmware? Your disk controller software? Your CPU microcode? We _all_ abdicate our trust-chain _somewhere_

This is why it's important to look at PRISM as a political issue and not merely a technical one, like I see a ton of people doing now. The best solution to government spying isn't to tell everyone to use Linux and DuckDuckGo, it's to change the spying itself.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#123

Post by ra »

swombat wrote: post #45
oinksoft wrote: post #13

I ceased using Google search except as a last resort when this story broke, and I had no idea what I had been missing out on with DDG: Excellent keyboard navigation . Also, DDG's results compared to a year ago are night-and-day. It seems to listen to my keywords better than Google did too, a growing annoyance I had. If you haven't, you really should try out DDG for a week.

I've done the same. Also switched to Firefox with full Adblock and tracking bugs blocking. It's not much, but at least I'm no longer leaving a huge slimy trail behind me online.

I'm using Ghostery on Chrome. Seem to do the job.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#124

Post by acdha »

cinquemb wrote: post #61

Anyone else wondering if DDG will come out with their version of email? Maybe something that uses end to end encryption (maybe working together with Mozilla Foundation)?

I'd prefer they became more competitive on search first: I try DDG a few times a year and it's a pretty big self-handicap when everything takes minutes rather than seconds to find.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#125

Post by iguana »

diminoten wrote: post #92
paulsutter wrote: post #56

It's not safe to assume the NSA doesn't log DDG searches. Look at the PRISM logo - it's a beam splitter. Read the slide, look at the "Upstream" portion. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream_slide_of_the... They're logging all your URLs and headers. How much are you willing to bet they can't decrypt https? I dont understand all the hubbub _is focused solely_ on direct server access (the bottom half of the s…

Spoiler alert: They can't decrypt it. That's why they have to ask these companies for the info, rather than just take it from the ISPs.

If they can decrypt some SSL (maybe low bit) it is likely a very intense process that requires vast hardware resources, so even if they can do it, it is not likely it is being done for all traffic, but could be applied to some traffic.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#127

Post by ninetenel »

Somewhat related but I've been canceling my subscriptions (Office365 in my case) to services I can't properly secure..

I'm also in the process of selling my surface pro and going back to a Linux laptop (OneNote 2013 sucks with touch on the Desktop for me .. and Microsoft's Windows8 version won't allow you to not use Skydrive)

Also, I pay Microsoft .. why won't they let me save my OneNote docs in a secure way using their Windows8 apps?

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#128

Post by v1tyaz »

cinquemb wrote: post #61

Anyone else wondering if DDG will come out with their version of email? Maybe something that uses end to end encryption (maybe working together with Mozilla Foundation)?

Startpage/Ixquick is coming out with an e-mail service called StartMail: https://startmail.com.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#129

Post by deno »

lurkinggrue wrote: post #69
nwh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using HTTPS, they can't even see your URLs or headers. That's sort of the point.

Email is unencrypted in transit.

In transit it’s actually pretty good bet it is encrypted. Now at rest it’s entirely different.

Re: PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

#130

Post by ewbuoi »

VladRussian2 wrote: post #62
missing_cipher wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really. If understood correctly, the NSA had direct lines to the fiber. It doesn't matter what search engine you use.

the issue is with HTTPS. To read that traffic NSA collects private keys from limited number of [big] companies as collecting them from all companies would be a very public affair. Thus from NSA's price/performance point of view smaller enterprises may be still be off the hook (for now).

They could get a valid key pair from a CA and MITM the connection. It could be detected if the user knows what the public key should be and compares it with what they received, but that seems pretty unlikely.
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