31–40 of 49 posts
In my experience, personal info removal is a scam. I haven't used DDG specifically, but other services I tried just send you a list of companies you still have to contact yourself.
Whatever this product is I feel the name is already a hindrance. Normal products don't have privacy in the name. Rightly or wrongly you will be judged when you say 'btw I use ... Privacy...'. The product should have strong privacy built into it and a commitment from the owners to keep it this way. Calling it something mundane and then competing on the merits of the product will favor mass adoption. How many users of…
> No need to install a separate VPN app. Once you sign up for Privacy Pro, you can install our VPN right in your DuckDuckGo browser > we use the open-source WireGuard protocol Any info on how that is implemented? Did they build some plug-in, where a user can enter VPN details/credentials? Asking since I'd love to have something, where I can add my own self-hosted VPN details to have browser only (not the whole machin…
The article links to some help pages which clarify that, although you need the browser to connect to the VPN, once connected it applies globally to the whole machine ( https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy-pro/vpn... ). So if you'll pardon my pun, I think they've probably just duck-taped a standard VPN client app into their browser app.
If it's true, then I'll only double the pun.
But that's why I'm also curious about the "No need to install a separate VPN app" part.
Never tried WIreGuard in Windows, but AFAIK it tries to mean serious business, "no connection runs past". So there should be things similar to WinPcap or something like that under the hood.
And they're unlikely to work without installation. Moreover, quite likely require a reboot after the install. But I could be wrong.
It’s still just censored AF Bing underneath - DDG doesn’t have its own index. Just use Brave Search (which _does_ have its own index) and in 1% of the cases it doesn’t do the trick, go to Google.
[1] https://docs.searxng.org/ [2] https://4get.ca/about#what-is-this
But using a VPN for privacy is a bad idea in the first place. At least Apple and Vivaldi get that and have moved to two party privacy designs.
I didn't even realize DDG had a browser. I've been using Brave for a few years now which has also offered a built-in VPN (which I don't use). If anyone has chose DDG over Brave, what were the deciding factors?
These days the bar for privacy should be higher than "we don't log your activity, trust us." We should aim higher than VPNs.
I've been enjoying iCloud Private Relay. Basically it's a type of onion routing. From a privacy perspective, it narrows your leap of faith to "trust that the system is architected the way we say it is and there's no out-of-band collusion among the relays." With that, the entry node (Apple) shouldn't be able to see your destination and the exit node (Apple partner) shouldn't be able to see your IP.
Fun fact: it breaks Google search for me and forced me to switch to DDG! I got a captcha almost all the time. In a way, I see that as a positive sign that it's really working to protect privacy.