161–170 of 178 posts
I like the search engine and I wish them all the best (seriously), but this method of advertising is bad.
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Highly hypothetical - to the extreme. How would any insurance co. know if it's me, or someone else in the household? Also afaik health insurance is mainly a US phenomenon thank god.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870464860457562... There are lots of ways this could play out. If you go to the site and register (increasingly likely), they might be able to detect you individually. Secondly, providers are starting to line up data by email address and other personal facts, so they may be able to match you like that. But even if they aren't absolutely sure it is you, they can still use t…
If you're endlessly searching for cancer cures, perhaps they should be aware of that.
Of course the solution is the US is universal health care for all. But that's never going to happen.
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Your argument would carry more weight if, the user had the ability to switch to SSL search from the "Classic" search page or if SSL search was a setting that was accessible from "Search Settings" or "Advanced Search" on the "Classic" page. The articles you reference speak to the problems for advertisers and related interests. They do not address issues of web user privacy. Don't get me wrong, Google is in the difficu…
I can talk a bit about why we didn't launch with "click here to switch to SSL search" links. When SSL search launched, web search was supported, but not every type of search was supported. For example, Google Image Search wasn't easily supported for some esoteric reasons (some browsers have a limit of 2 simultaneous connections, and that can interact badly with SSL + fetching bunches of thumbnail images). The concern…
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Close, but wrong.
Which is why I edited my top post. No need to spread inaccurate information. Since you're going on the offensive, a defensive move might be in order: no, I wasn't. I said "odds are", not "DDG does", because I didn't know for sure and did not intend to claim to. The odds are in my favor, the fact is an aberration on otherwise almost-uniform behavior by search providers.
The odds would have been in your favor if you have said "odds are a search engine chosen at random does this too".
But, instead, you said: "odds are DDG does this too", thus binding the odds to DDG.
Since the general stance of DDG is pro privacy, you should have reasoned that the odds were in favor of DDG NOT doing this.
(Not to mention that posting that you "were close" didn't provide anything to the discussion --apart from some ill-conceived face saving from your part).
That site turned me off. I am using DDG as my primary search engine for many months now. I really dislike the style and "atmosphere" of that site. The images are seemingly unordered and could use some borders. The images of the dog biting the women or the predator disgust me. Then some "motivationals" and memes that do not help the case. This site gave me mental stress (the left-alignment of varied sized text and ima…
Take it easy, man! I mean, whatever...
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This isn't just a matter of advertising. Your search history is an incredibly personal and detailed profile of who you are, and governments have a history of trying to use that sort of information for $badThings. See: US DOJ request for search engine histories in 2005. There's a reason why librarians fought so hard to keep your book checkouts private when the Patriot Act passed. Search histories have a potential for…
Then don't select such a government. Last time I checked USA was a democracy.
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heh true, true. I think generally though, a very very vocal minority make a ton of noise about privacy. Look at adblock. If you were a newcomer to the net and just read comments here or at reddit, you'd assume everyone uses it. But the figure is more like 1 or 2% at most have adblock or similar installed. There's this big elitist movement that supposes that only idiots click on adverts, that they only click because t…
Your comment looks like you assume that the majority of internet users have an informed opinion about privacy on the internet. I deny that assumption. My observation is that more than 90% computer users don't have a clue. They don't know how computers work, what they store, and what they send. I've even seen computer engineering students that don't know that Gmail does semantic analysis on their e-mail, despite the p…
My comment isn't that people have an informed opinion about privacy, more that it's a moot point to them. It's like asking them their opinion on a new fuel injection component.
Users rightly assume that their personal details will be kept securely by any website they give them to.
> " Indeed, I suspect that among those who do an informed opinion, very few have deliberately chosen not to use privacy helpers like adblock, noscript, or Tor"
BS. Try using tor for a day. It's useless, ridiculously slow, and means things don't work properly. Also I tried adblock for a day, and I hated it. I want to see the internet uncensored. If a website pisses me off with popup ads, I'll just not go there again. I think that's pretty typical behavior. NoScript is an even stupider idea. Who in their right mind would disable javascript? Pretty much all websites will be broken. The only people who would install noscript are the analy OCD afflicted control freaks.
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I do not want myself distracted from material that has no bearing on what I am looking at. Just to play devil's advocate, but wouldn't targetted ads be more preferable then, since they WOULD have a bearing on what you're looking at?
I'm all for targeted ads, when I am looking for products and/or services to buy. 99% of the time im on the internet, I am NOT going to buy stuff. I'm going to forums that I attend, getting email, working to help that ubuntu works better (by bug reports and fixes), and researching on more stuff that I can do in IT
And as we all know, there are absolutely no adverts to do with that.