Topic: Thoughts on DuckDuckGo? (Read 795 times)

Doesn’t DUckDuckGo run on the Tor network?  If you do a packet capture and check the IPs you should see them as tor nodes.  Also all traffic is encrypted I believe.  I like it for searching specific things like hacker stuff.  I’m a researcher.

DuckDuckGo is a sleeper with lots of potential..

Which reminds me. Google won the search engine war.

BING is great to.

I live in hope that surfers will return to direct navigation, but that seems to be less likely with every passing year.

• Tor (there's a way to get the Tor Browser to give separate circuits i.e. IPs for each domain name you're visiting)
• Virtual machines (I always use a fresh VM image every time I search something via the Disposable VM feature in QubesOS)

I plan to try using cjdns soon, I think it has better privacy properties than Tor (there's I2P, but I'm not sure it's much better than Tor for accessing standard DNS resolved web addresses)

What other ways?

If you think DuckDuckGo is a privacy respecting search engine, then remember the logic behind information theory: if you tell someone information, you can't un-tell them, your secret is out.


DuckDuckGo are simply promising you that they aren't collating your search data. There's no way of knowing what they do with it, until some whistleblower exposes something (not saying there will be such a thing, just that no-one except DuckDuckGo insiders actually know whether they collect data, or if they share it with anyone)

What's their promise worth? My view: not much. You can keep your search data private in other ways with far more credible guarantees.

I don't like duckduckgo.
Well, I like it, I want to like it, I want to use it, but it's not functional to me.
The results are bad and I have to use Google to find what I want.

If you are a web developer, I am Sorry tô give you the bad news, but you need to study seo (search engine optimization). You have to study how google works and how he ranks webpages.

There is the encrypted.google.com

In Theory this encrypted google would not track you.. this is my primary search engine... I love ddg but it doesn't work

I just went to IE to see how a certain page renders compared to Chrome and after pasting the lengthy URL in search bar, a pop-up generated instructing me that if I wanted to search faster, type it in. Really?

At this penning, I'm still waiting for the page to generate, whereas with Chrome, I already have the resulting page ... sans duck or alpaca shit.

I like Google because if I visit a website and purchase a widget, Google will follow me around the Net for the next week showcasing ads depicting the website so to entice me to revisit the site and purchase another widget. Meanwhile, the site is being charged for my eyeballs, sometimes for a larger chunk of change if I accidentally click the ad because my cursor was positioned over it while activating my touchpad thingy.

Image some wife using her husband's computer for mundane tasks and the ads she keeps seeing are for divorce lawyers. She could easily conclude that hubby wasn't searching for how to make breakfast delivered to his loved one in bed.

Search is a topic that needs to be a topic discussed in this community because there is a HUGE problem of only centralized monopolies that control the web-crawling results of duckduckgo, google, bing, yahoo, etc.

There is a complete lack of established independent crawlers that are used by people because anything that gets large enough is consumed by google, microsoft, yahoo/verizon. Duckduckgo is no alternative, its powered by the same underlying engine. This becomes control of data and control of flow of information....including information you will never see as it is censored from search.

How can web crawlers and search engines be effectively decentralized and usable?

(I see nothing available or is it my searches will never let me find something? something that may try to emerge...Laboratory for Web Algorithmics law.di.unimi.it/
BUbiNG is a high-performance, scalable, distributed, open-source crawler built... )

I'm starting also to use this service.


Yes, watch this video if you want, it was on my "suggested video playlist"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBnDWSvaQ1I

I wouldn´t worry about the TOR software, I´d rather worry about the rumors
that certain intelligence agencies (e.g. the NSA) are owning a non-negligible
percentage of the TOR exit nodes. If this is indeed true, your anonymity can be
compromised if you are unlucky.

Obviously TOR is still more anonymous than a regular internet connection.

I never knew that TOR's default browser was DDG. I've never used TOR because I'm afraid it will be malicious to my computer somehow.

I myself have never used Tor, since I've no interest in what I think it represents and what it's a tool for, but thank you for this post.  Was not aware that this was the case.  Over time I've come to distrust Google and I think they've got their collective fingers in too many pies.  They seem to be worse than Facebook in terms of how much personal information they have access to and thus how much power they wield.

If only I owned a significant block of Google stock, which I think is called Alphabet now, because I would love to be able to vote my proxy for same once a year for the shareholder meeting.  I think everyone should own stock in companies they despise for just this purpose.

I used to think, this was a default search engine only for tor! Silly me LOL. I don't know why I did not like it in tor but after reading this post I tried to give it a go and searched for it. The extension came out and when I was going to add the extension - then this nice little message just sold me. I am gonna give it a go over google for few days.

The post was an eye opener for me.

As long as it is the official search engine in TOR browser it is much better than google, no need to add anything else.

Doesn't DDG have the same results as google does?
Except for images.

I've been using it for over a month now for basically everything and I never had any problems.
The only thing I resort back to google is when I'm searching for images.


Yes.
I preferr fighting it.

I can't deny it's convenient to open YouTube and have all the vids I want to see in front of me..
But in the greather scheme of things, I don't think that's a good thing.
Too much power concetrated in one place, that can easily be abused (it probably already is).

I made DuckDuckGo my default browser a few weeks back, I'm liking it as well. It has a simpler user interface, which i'm still getting used to but the browser seems to be smarter than Firefox or Chrome.

For example, if I'm looking up a song title I'll get "videos" as a hot link (among others), however if I'm looking up a backyard barbeque I'll get a "products" hot link to appear.

Additionally, DDG has some quick filters at the top of the search results to narrow down the geographic area and time period of the search.

The predictive ads from other browsers are the worst - they're not even timely! I go to my bank account's website today (to confirm if my bitcoin purchase has been debited, of course) and tomorrow I have an ad for my bank account's website. I wonder how much my dumb bank pays for that misappropriated ad!

I'll be another one that prefers to use StartPage as an alternative to both Google, and DDG. DDG as a concept is great, but in reality it's too much of a pain to find the things that you want. Google is up there with the way it handles search results, and probably is the best other than for the privacy concerns. As JetCash mentioned Google also likes to give you a lot of it's results based on money rather than what you are actually searching.

I like DuckDuckGo for my own searching, and Google annoys me by returning results that it thinks I ought to see, rather than results that i want. Unfortunately, I need to preserve an active relationship with Google to ensure that I can get traffic to my websites. The omni-box has been a disaster for domain owners who relied on direct navigation for much of their traffic.

Not a fan of DDG to be honest, its results are nowhere near as accurate as the ones that I get from startpage/ixquick, and it's even worse if I want to search for stuff in languages other than English.

I choose to fight it.
They will have to offer me a lot more than just convenience to give them all the information about my life.
I choose to have at least some secrets.

Privacy is liberty in my opinion.

Even if said server makes your life more convenient?  I love how Google knows traffic flows.  I love the way I turn on my GPS and it already knows where I want to go based on my calendar.

The world is moving towards absolute observation.  You can fight it, but it will win over time. 

In twenty years, the mist outside your room won't be condensation... it will be tiny drones that float into your respiratory system, tag your DNA and transmit constant updates to its owner.  You may have thousands of drones in your body at one time... 

:/

a computer is just good for video games and Point of Sales... it's a like a trading station in market, everyone can see what you do with it. the only things well kept on the internet is the videos logs and papers logs if jeffrey esptein in his sex orgies with underage girls, billionaires, royals, high western officials... for the rest, it's public.

a computer isn't a pc, as private computer, but PUBLIC computer, remember they inverse everything. they are upside down. they are in a soul shakedown... and frankly there is nothing you can do to help them. it's too late. it's powers too big for humans to understand... the only things is expedite their ends.

If you go to the three bars in the upper right hand corner, then select Options, then select Privacy & Security you will see a box checked that says "Remember logins and passwords for websites." Mine was checked by default. If you click on the Saved Logins... button you'll get a list of your saved passwords.

I just tried it out, and it does indeed ask you if you want to save your password. I checked if it was in the log and it wasn't. So false alarm on Firefox saving passwords without your permission. Firefox is now cooler than I previously thought.


There is also a feature called the "Master Password". Basically it is a password to unlock your other passwords. This is pretty cool. This way you only need to remember one password for all the sites you login to. Someone from an outside computer would still have to deal with the many passwords you've set up. I'm probably not going to be using this feature, but I still think it is a great option. Long ago, I was contemplating building a website that does this for you, but it appears Firefox has already done it.

censored like all private web crawler... try certain querry and you willl... I am not sure you even have an idea of what type of querry you should do to probe, it's a nice exercise for you . or maybe you could search : what is removed from private webcrawler result? hoooo... they lie to you, no, never, you are just too dumb and only seeing and not thinking. sadly.

I use VPN and DuckDuckGo browser on phone whenever I browse, my fav feature is that there is a 'burn' button just near the address bar which can burn all the data and history in a single click. Pretty convenient

Is that really true?
I always get a messege saying do you want Firefox to save this password and I click no o.o

I've just switched from Microsoft Edge to Firefox. I use to be a chrome person, but it slowed down my computer. Something to be aware of with Firefox is that by default it saves your passwords in the browser. So if anybody has access to your computer they will be able to see whatever passwords you've used. I really dislike Firefox for doing this, but their user interface is so great that I've made the switch. Plus it is fast!

I'll repeat once again, just be aware that Firefox saves passwords by default. So if you don't like this feature you have to manually turn it off.

Me too.

I've switched from Chrome&Google to Firefox&DuckDuckGo some time recently.
I don't like the idea of a server that has access to every thought I searched in my entire life since I got my first computer.
Essentialy, those in posession of that power can blackmail anyone they dislike because everyone has searched something that's wrong in the eyes of the public at least once in their lives.

Yeah, I try to stay away from Google companies whenever I can. They are getting too big. They can track you over half the Internet.

DuckDuckGo is great. Best thing I love about having DDG as a default search engine is that I can just type "qr code " in front of a link and DDG will convert it into a QR Code. I can then scan it with my phone and use it as a copy/paste feature between my phone and my PC. Works the best when you are sending a link over a phone that you visited on your PC, since you just change the link to start with "qr code " and press enter.

I use it primarily...

I've been working on becoming a web developer. So I started downloading all the major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Internet Explorer, and Opera). I also took a look at some other search engines and have discovered DuckDuckGo. I'm really liking it so far, because when you search for things there are the classic tabs: Web, Images, Videos, and News. Sometimes for certain keywords there are other tabs that relate to that keyword. For example, if I search up a food item there is usually a recipe tab where I can look at recipes. If I look up other types of words I may get a definition tab.

Another thing I like about the search engine is that in the Images they have the pixel size written over a transparent gray box when you hover over an image. Google has this too, but it is at the bottom of the picture and isn't as aesthetically pleasing. I also like the fact that you can get the full scale image without going to the website like you would have to do with Google. Also, another feature that I like, is when you search for something an icon of the site is to the left of the url link. This is useful if there are some sites that you know you don't like to visit. For me personally, I'm not a fan of Forbes, because it takes to long to load. With the icon there, I can identify which links I would like to click on and which ones I don't at a quicker speed.

DuckDuckGo seems like something I think a lot of people on this forum would like, because it doesn't track all the websites that you visit (or at least that is what they say). When I'm Googling it is kind of freaky when advertisements come up tailored for me. That is kind of cool, but at the same time it is just a bit creepy, because Google knows me a bit too well for my liking.

I've decided to give DuckDuckGo a try for awhile and see if I like it. Anyone else think this is cool?