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DuckDuckGo: Illusion of Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "With all of the news stories about users moving to DuckDuckGo because of NSA spying, this article discusses why the privacy provided by DuckDuckGo is more the privacy from third-party tracking (advertisers) but may do little, if anything, to prevent the NSA from tracking your searches."
"The NSA Can't Loose" ... Really?
I started using DuckDuckGo because, out of all the other search engines out there, it's the only one I've found whose entire mission statement centers around _not_ collecting information on every goddamn thing you do. Yes it's probably still being tapped at the fibre optic cable level so it doesn't really matter, that's not the point. The point is to vote with your dollar, or in this case your page view, far more influential these days than one thinks.
I don't use DuckDuckGo because it preserves my privacy. I use DuckDuckGo because they don't try to take it away from me.
At least for me its not, its about not feeding the beast directly. I jumped to Linux, Opera, and DDG as a way to add a few more cycles and maybe a few more man hours to the mess rather than hand it over directly with Windows, IE or Chrome, and Google. If anyone thinks they can really be anonymous in this ecosystem they are sorely mistaken. I do believe however there are less trodden paths and a little more pains in the rear that can be had, and as a silent protest, I chose to use them.
While the NSA brand of privacy invasion will probably never be avoidable, unless you renounce all forms of data transfer, it's pleasing to have SOME control over your internet presence in so far as keeping advertising trackers off your back. I don't think it says anywhere at DuckDuckGo that it avoids NSA tracking. and anyone using the service who believes it does so is unaware of how the NSA programs work.
I may be breaking the fundamental rules of Slashdot, but ...
- the "article" is a single post on a recently created blog
- they misspell "lose"
- a quick google of Brett Wooldrige doesn't bring up anything exciting (a Forbes blog account with no content?)
This is the very definition of "nothing to see here, move along".
-
This is one, gigantic, "no shit, sherlock".
Most probably google knows more about me than the NSA, making money with this information and not paying taxes, well only a bit
Is it any safer? They bill themselves as "the world's most private search engine" but that doesn't really mean anything.
Run your traffic encrypted through another country with actual privacy protections.
It's not perfect, but it is another complication and barrier to direct monitoring.
Ultimately, the NSA reveal is a good thing - it's going to drive demand for virtual private cloud services where you hold the keys, and perhaps, a move back to corporate controlled cloud services on-site. Great news if you're in IT.
..don't panic
At least Ixquick is not a U.S. company: https://ixquick.com/eng/prism-program-revealed.html
While their searches aren't as fast as Google's, I have found them to be pretty good quality-wise.
This is because DDG does not use crypto algorithms which support perfect forward secrecy.
So it would require significantly more work for NSA to deal with a site using PFS. Source: netcraft
IMHO, any "story" that's clearly a blog entry should be rejected as op-ed flamebait. Slashdot devs should make this easier for the "editors" by blacklisting blockspot in the submission filter.
With that said, I don't think anyone here is naive enough to think that federal agencies can't spy on anyone they want. My guess is that people are using DDG to make a statement. I personally don't use DDG because its results were terrible when I gave it an honest try about 6 months ago after Google briefly broke their search engine results for anyone using Adblock.
It's kind of tough to understand why people would think that DDG has any magic to stop the NSA from eavesdropping on it in realtime. Isn't its hosting done by Amazon to begin with? (srsly a question, idk)
Aside from that, DDG does have its benefits. Not setting any cookies is important. Not remembering search history on their end is important. It also prefers to serve up SSL-enabled pages instead of their unencrypted counterparts. And a very beneficial feature is that it doesn't set the referrer when you go somewhere.
But NOTHING will prevent the NSA from eavesdropping on traffic en-route if they choose to do so, given that they have the incentive to do so and the cooperation of the providers that actually matter.
At least it appears DDG is trying to help with privacy. They have links on their minimalist home page which lead to suggestions for protecting your search privacy. Found out about Disconnect.me through DDG. DDG also has way cool swag [http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216375-t-shirts-stickers-more] on the cheap.
Be gentle. It's his first Blog Post.
It's about as good as a google search and it gives the wikipedia article for any topic at the top. My opinion is better than your opinion.
It's about as good as a google search [b]and it gives the wikipedia article for any topic at the top[/b]. My opinion is better than your opinion.
Don't know about you, but when I want to look up something on Wikipedia, I look for it on Wikipedia. Having Wikipedia info displayed automatically for a search isn't really a "feature" as far as I'm concerned.
I think the article brings up and interesting point about who's SSL certs the NSA has access to. It's reasonable to assume that they are capturing most if not all Internet traffic in the states (at the very least all packets entering or leaving the county.) What is unknown is how much of that encrypted traffic can be easily decrypted. If I were a three letter gov't agency intent on decrypting massive amounts of traffic, I would go straight for the keys. It's particularly of note that DuckDuckGo does NOT use session keys in its SSL implementation, meaning if their private key got compromised, all previous searches would also be compromised. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume that the NSA has found a way to that key, either through secret court orders, or good old fashioned nefarious means. Especially for a site like DDG, who makes promises of "privacy". Makes you wonder who else's keys they have access to.
When was the last time you searched for something and found it using a commercial search engine? I've never, ever found anything on search engines. I have my bookmark library (entirely non-cloud) and ask HUMAN BEINGS for recommendations when I need a new kind of software. Then I might use the search engine to find their site the first time, but that's hardly blindly searching for stuff. I always just find 100% spam, irrelevant crap and generally low-grade junk when I search for *anything*. The entire concept of searching for things in general (not counting service-specific engines) is foreign to me. It just doesn't work in my world. I don't understand what people search for that they get proper results. Or maybe they just have extremely low demands.
DDG is a reskinned Yandex with shortcuts to search particular sites. If you don't commonly use site: searches on Google, and you can't stand Yandex, you won't like DDG.
Hi, this is Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo. I do not believe we can be compelled to store or siphon off user data to the NSA or anyone else. All the existing US laws are about turning over existing business records and not about compelling you change your business practices. In our case such an order would further force us to lie to consumers, which would put us in trouble with the FTC and irreparably hurt our business. We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. We have spoken with many lawyers particularly skilled and experienced in this part of US and international law. If we were to receive such a request we believe as do these others it would be highly unconstitutional on many independent grounds, and there is plenty of legal precedent there. With CALEA in particular, search engines are exempt. There are many additional legal and technical inaccuracies in this article and I will not address all of them in this comment. All our front-end servers are hosted on Amazon not Verizon, for example. A couple other responses to things I've noticed in the comments already: --Our servers are already located around the world. European users are generally not hitting US-based servers, for example. --We do have PFS on our cert: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=duckduckgo.com&s=50.18.192.251
Article has nothing to do with title. No supporting evidence either. Author obviously has done no research and throws a bunch of hypothetical nonsense against Weinberg. Thumbs DOWN.
I found it funny that, right there at the top, there's a big proud "Ads by Google" link. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it does color one's perception when the blogger is basically saying "sure Google is cooperating with the NSA, but they're a lot bigger than DuckDuckGo" (for whatever reason we should care about that).
I switched to DDG a few weeks ago, but it had more to do with my changing perception of companies like Facebook and Google than it did with any idea the move would somehow deter the NSA from snooping on me.
#DeleteChrome
what do you expect? it's bing. Since when did people believe a microsoft-based search is privacy friendly? "anonymous" is just a hilarious misnomer.
About four hours ago and saved off a new image so they'll stay that way on restore. I care less about privacy that redirecting money away from Google.
They bill themselves as "the world's most private search engine" but that doesn't really mean anything.
It means about as much as "the world's most virtuous whore".
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Slashdot: Illusion of Content
I feel compelled to let anyone here who has not RTFA to not bother. It is a poorly written blog entry that's nothing but hyperbole and speculation. It's also badly researched and contains a lot of inaccuracies. One of the commenters is the CEO of DDG and he corrects some of the misinformation.
I've been using DDG for 2 years and it is great. Not always as good as Google but a good alternative for most searches. Make sure you set it to your region (settings).
So, the majority of the population now realizes that their activity is in some way monitored, and they wish to evade that monitoring. They need to consider this: they are amateurs playing for nickel stakes in this game. The NSA doesn't care about them, and the people aren't used to playing this game either, for their part. This game exists, at the moment, primarily between the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in human history and a very small population that is doing everything they can possibly do to hide. We think that using airgapping a network and using USB drives simply to move data across the room is a powerful security measure...these guys used USB drives to move data between countries, and even that wasn't good enough to protect them. The average citizen merely worries about some amorphous knowledge of their habits...the real target population faces death, or perhaps even worse internment in a black site somewhere for years first. And that population has been working on hiding for quite some time now; this is not a new game just because the rest of us know it's being played now.
So...with that context, why would anyone think that simply using a different search engine fucking matters?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Apparently all you need to get front page on slashdot is an article with one link to a blog, that has only one post, created by a random user. Hell the 3rd paragraph of the article beings with 'TL;DR' a phrase I associate with image boards such as 4chan than I do actual journalism and news. While the article is somewhat interesting it's nothing more than an op-ed piece or a letter-to-the-editor at best or some anti-DDG fud created by some PR firm at worst.
I like to think that would be true, but honestly about 50% of the things I click on in a Google search are Wikipedia articles, even when I didn't initially search Wikipedia directly.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Still wasting time navigating to websites, eh?
> .these guys used USB drives to move data between countries
Look, if anyone with any sense can bypass the snooping, they must know that. That only leaves *us* that they are snooping on.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
At least it appears DDG is trying to help with privacy.
You're kidding, right? They're a Union Square Ventures startup, which is a Fred Wilson VC funded fund.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Wilson_(financier)
Chase Capital Partners as the sole active LP. This is JPMorgan/Chase Bank:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Manhattan
This is one of the "Big Four" ... these guys got $25B in TARP funds in the Wall Street bailout because they were "too big to fail":
http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list
These guys collect more information on people than God. When the Pope wants to know something, instead of praying, he calls up these guys.
They have an exit enclave for DDG search engine traffic and also hidden service at 3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion...
So there at least they provide some additional layer of protection for those who are needed.
aka "go fish"
I just add "wiki" to the end of my search and wikipedia will be in the top 3
The source link for the article is a new blog with one (yes, count it, one) post?? I call fowl.
navigating...
and are you still using netscape?
DuckDuckGo should move out of USA (and UK) at this point. They could have a huge business, but not in NSA occupied territory.
1) The reason I switched was because it doesn't use tracking cookies.
2) It doesn't own Android, Gmail, Youtube Adsense Doublclick Maps or a myriad of other sides that can be used to 'un-proxy' me and 'un-NAT' me and get around my cookie blocks.
3) It is https so the NSA *need* a warrant, unencrypted search automatically goes into the NSA database.
4) Gmail failed a link test, a disguised link (not a straight http://...) sent from my old gmail account to a pop3 was visited by a server in Arizona.
5) They don't have a feed to NSA currently, its not listed on PRISM
But best of all
6) It's actually quite good at finding stuff and better than Google at finding job CVs from NSA spooks to see what else they might want to confess to. Google is keeps substituting more popular works.
I assume from this piece that Google are suffering. Well, point 2) is entirely their fault, they linked all that data together so I have little sympathy for them.
I don't like being tracked for daring to question the legality of an illegal mass surveillance program, and Google's can always move their business out of mainland USA and to Hong Kong where they are on the other side of the great spywall of NSAland.
Sure, the NSA still gets what you search for and the results, but unless they have control over the Tor network (which is doubtful), they cannot associate that info with you.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Duck Duck WTF
To strip off the referrer. Otherwise the end site would see the URL of the DuckDuckGo search revealing the details of the search, page, etc.
The headers in my next protocol will use identifiers, like any ther protocol. except my identifiers will be: JIHAD, NUKE, SARIN, INFIDEL, ...
It's about time to apply techniques similar to Culture jamming to these spying tactics. It probably won't stop them, but we can at least try to piss them off.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's about as good as a google search [b]and it gives the wikipedia article for any topic at the top[/b]. My opinion is better than your opinion.
Don't know about you, but when I want to look up something on Wikipedia, I look for it on Wikipedia. Having Wikipedia info displayed automatically for a search isn't really a "feature" as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, I agree, but it's worse than that.
Not only does DDG put that "helpful" wikipedia excerpt/link at the top of their search results, but if you install the "DuckDuckGo Plus" Firefox extension, they will intercept your Google search, and cram that box in your Google search results as well. I get that some people may want that functionality (I don't -- if I use Google, it's because I want to see exactly what Google returns), but it's questionable to have this sort of content injection enabled at all in an extension whose primary purpose is to add a search engine to the search-bar, search completions, etc. lists, not to perform content injection. And it's downright evil to have it enabled by default, but I guess they think I should consider myself lucky they permit me to turn it off at all...
Yeah, no thanks, DuckFace. I'll stick with ixquick.
My other complaint with DuckDuckGo is that they use redirects to search results, just like Google. (Ostensibly, a purpose of these is to prevent information about your search leaking through the referer header -- in practice, https accomplishes that automatically, but the redirects do let the search engine monitor what you click on.) No, I don't think DDG is logging the redirects in a user-identifiable way, but why should I have to trust them (with anything beyond the query itself) when I can use ixquick which links directly to the results?
I don't know but if you do not want to use Google, DuckDuckGo is by far one of the best alternatives. Try doing temperature, currency conversions with DuckDuckGo, the integrated results from WolframAlpha are pretty good. The only thing is missing is image search imho.
haha same here. Although on Safari I have the keywords extension installed so I can type w and then whatever I want, and the search goes directly to wikipedia.
DuckDuckGo has NOTHING to do with hiding from the NSA, and the owners of Slashdot know this. The privacy offered by services like this is against common or garden abuse of your search history by ordinary establishment agencies like the police.
It is standard operating procedure today for any person under OVERT government investigation to have their computer seized, and to have Google et al provide details of that person's search history. If that target has been a careful user of services like DuckDuckGo, their search history CANNOT be discovered. This being so, why is Slashdot attempting to downplay the usefulness of such services? Do you really have to be told?
The owners of Slashdot, with ZERO legal necessity, disconnected the citizens of Iran from all the open-source services they provide. Slashdot is the establishment, and the owners of Slashdot willingly participate in ALL black propaganda ploys designed to make people less careful online. We see the same phenomenon with US TV shows made today. There is a total BAN on shows reminding people that their cell phones are tracked in real-time so long as the phone has a powered battery. GPS like functions have been a legal requirement for all phones sold in the USA for years now, but the TV networks have agreed to NEVER remind the viewers that their phones provide law enforcement with a constant trace on their location.
Indeed, so insane is this rule, that there was a recent episode of the American version of 'Shameless' where the plot revolved around finding a person with a cellphone who was trapped in a lorry somewhere. The story included characters who were supposed to be technical experts, but not once did they suggest using the location tracking ability of the phone. You are probably stupid enough to disbelieve me (regarding the ban) but pay attention to any recent US TV show, and you'll see what I say is true. Much older shows, before the ban, of course frequently had the storyline using the location tracking feature, but the government has ALWAYS been concerned about TV shows 'educating' potential criminals.
Watch any popular show with criminal activity, and you'll see the characters ALWAYS do it wrong (by design). Realistic depictions of criminal methods are not allowed on shows popular with the sheeple. Your government calculates that far more (dumb) criminals will be caught as a result of their cell phone use if TV shows fail to remind people how the technology really works.
On a similar note, the owners of Slashdot would like to remind you that using encryption is a waste of time, because the NSA has magic computers that can crack any encryption, and using proper software methods to erase information on hard-drives is pointless, because data recovery teams have magic surface scanning technology that can reconstruct any erased data.
Yes, Slashdot uses that old psychological method known today as FUD. And sadly, this method does discourage a significant number of people from engaging in best practises, which is why Slashdot runs these stories.
Name me another major web search engine with an official Tor onion endpoint. DDG is the only one I know.
https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/
https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.tor2web.org/
If clicking a bookmark or using a Firefox search assist is navigating, then yes. You make it sound like he's typing in the URL.
The only thing is missing is image search imho.
Use ixquick.
Actually, use ixquick (or its sister site startpage) for all the other stuff, too.
I have been using DDG for quite a bit, but its lack of image search is a little bit inconvenient. I'm testing Yandex to see if I can use it for everyday stuff.
I have been using DuckDuckGo for some time now but stopped lately because I notice something fishy. When you hover over a link the bar at the bottom of the screen displays the link address to make you believe clicking on that link will go to that address, but if you look closely at it when you click it flashes "Sending Request..." then "Waiting for https://duckduckgo.com/" and finally "Waiting for https://what-you-clicked.com/". So they are redirecting all the search results so they know who clicked what. Great. There is no reason a company dedicated to privacy would be using any type of redirect, they should take you directly to the page you clicked simple as that.
There are many similar services in other countries. Startpage is hosted in the Netherlands for example.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
DuckDuckGo is partnered with Yandex (top Russian search engine). Do you want your search data being viewed by the NSA or Russia? Choose one, or find another search engine.
I've never tried DuckDuckGo, but did today because of this article. I chose a type of search that I do often and tried it on Duck, Google, and Bing. (Searching for a specific string on a large forum website.) Google, my usual favourite, came in last. Middle was Bing, and for some reason, DuckDuckGo was the best, and found things for me I had never before known about. I was mildly impressed. I know this is totally anecdotal, but it made me happy. That, along with the slightly better privacy, made me switch today. Also, I think it's important to punish Google for rolling over for the US government. They were somewhat good at standing up to the Chinese government for privacy issues, yet did nothing when the USA decided to do far worse. In my opinion, they've lost every bit of good will they've gained with their "don't be evil" slogan and policies. They're no better morally than Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, or Microsoft, the slow slide into corruption is now complete. On to the next underdog...
Probably going to get modded down for asking such a simple(stupid?) question.. I've never been able to find this answer though.
From the article:
However, DuckDuckGo is using SSL encryption. Without DuckDuckGo's private SSL certificate, your search queries (but not your location) are invisible.
Can someone clarify this for me? I want to make sure I understand this. If I search for "Star Trek" in Google then I get redirected to
https://www.google.com/search?q=star%20trek&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=np&source=hp.
Naturally, "star trek" is the search if you are only provided that address. It also clearly shows that I am using firefox. Does SSL protect the actual web address from being sniffed without Google's SSL master cert?
If so, then its safe to assume that my cable internet provider could see that I'm using google(based on the IP address of the traffic) but can't tell that I might be a hardcore Trekkie or that I'm using Firefox(at least from the link.. surely they could sniff traffic from elsewhere and determine my user agent string). Is this correct?
So how do I determine what actually is protected by SSL and what isn't? Is there a cheat sheet somewhere? I've always been curious about this but I don't want a 4 year degree in network design...
Give American Google all your search data or give Russian Yandex (DuckDuckGo/Blekko) all your search data.
When has DDG ever claimed to be a counter for federal tracking? Hint: NEVER. Their main selling point is twofold:
1. Do not get "search bubbled"
2. Do not get tracked by advertisers
If you don't want to be tracked, use TOR. Anyone with half a fucking clue how the internet works would understand that DDG isn't doing shit to prevent federal tracking, and was never designed to in the first place.
What makes you all think Yandex (DuckDuckGo) doesn't share their data with the NSA?
When I'm being nefarious and Googling things, I use a dedicated local machine which knows nothing about me, and which has all of its Internet traffic routed through a country (over a VPN) that I do not expect trouble from.
My VPN provider does not keep logs. I fire up a browser (on that VPN-connected machine) with Private Browsing turned on, and do my nefarious things with plain-old Google.
I disconnect and reconnect to the provider periodically, which flushes the state and the connection relationship I have with them.
Not that I look for anything particularly wrong or harmful, but my desire to learn is powerful, and I simply do not want to be restrained in the future for being curious now.
The only attack I'm aware of, given this scenario, is timing-based: If the NSA were watching my local address and the off-shore VPN'd address, a correlation could be made between the timing and size of some packets.
But if OpenVPN had random padding and latency abilities, even a timing-based attack would be impossible. (Indeed, I might just suggest this to them.)
Kid-proof tablet..
After deleting and hiding my posts about the connection between DuckDuckGo, Russia and Yandex, I have now pointed Slashdot.org to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts file.
If DDG doesn't store data persistently or share cookies with other sites, NSA would have to dedicate a data center bigger than DDGs own one to store all searches and subsequent clicks if they are needed later. They would then only have IP addresses which would be hard to resolve to identities of foreign users they are most interested in. They would never be able to scale this to EVERY popular site in existence.
I use DDG because [a] it's simply not Google, [b] the CEO posts on slashdot, [c] they're clear about what they do and don't do, and [d] they have a cool bow-tie wearing duck as their mascot!
DDC sends every search request (including the search term and your IP) to Microsoft to see if Microsoft has any advertising for DDC to show. And we all know that Microsoft and the NSA are good friends. So when DCC say they do not track it may be correct, however they do send your data to a company that does track.
Actually, I have a Quick Search set up on Firefox for it.
If be "navigating" you mean typing "wiki (search term)" in my address bar, causing the Quick Search I have set up in Firefox to automatically run it through Wikipedia and take me straight to the results, then yes.
That's a feature Firefox has had built-in since version 2.something.
Try bookmarking this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/%25s ...and then make "wiki" the bookmark's keyword.
Now start typing your search in the address bar and make "wiki" the first word.
Oh, I agree, but it's worse than that.
Not only does DDG put that "helpful" wikipedia excerpt/link at the top of their search results, but if you install the "DuckDuckGo Plus" Firefox extension, they will intercept your Google search, and cram that box in your Google search results as well. I get that some people may want that functionality (I don't -- if I use Google, it's because I want to see exactly what Google returns), but it's questionable to have this sort of content injection enabled at all in an extension whose primary purpose is to add a search engine to the search-bar, search completions, etc. lists, not to perform content injection.
Why not set up Quick Search bookmarks for every engine and get rid of the search bar (and those extensions)?
I like to think that would be true, but honestly about 50% of the things I click on in a Google search are Wikipedia articles, even when I didn't initially search Wikipedia directly.
I feel the same. Google's search is better, and it could be when searching about, say, wagon wheels, there is a more definitive site than wikipedia.
please, tell us more
Just make a greasemonkey script to blast away the url redirect. There is one for google already
I read TFA, and the paragraph title "The NSA Canâ(TM)t Lose" really irked me.
But, as an American who knows that my own government has turned into a cabal, I know that it is the reality.
I used to be proud as an American. Used to be.
Now, I hang my head low, feeling so powerless, so ashamed.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
where a script runs all day search for penis and when i actually do a search it just encrypts the text and result to me.
every day you get a new trigger word the nsa needs to look for like , BOMB , TERRORIST....MURDER , KILL , JIHAD....FUCK
and more....
this brand new service will be offered by your most trusted AT&T whom uses the system to remove all your copyrighted material and hands you over to hollywood and the fbi ( whom due to the loads encountered must stop all other criminal investigations to start going after that lone music tune downloader)
I use duckduckgo's !bang feature https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
you asking the spying sacks a shit to stop so then the people aren't looking over there backs even when doing no wrong?
YA SEEK HELP NSA AGENTS YOUR PARANOIA WILL DESTROY YA
any further questions?
if you search for something, you may want to have web-results and wikipedia. When DDG displays you an excerpt from Wikipedia (like a Definition of your term), it may be enough, so you do not need to open wikipedia, but read it just before reading the rest of the search results.
why the Special Search? Its just one page more ... try using:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%25s
who needs such plugins? I did not install it either, just as i do not install stupid toolbars. Some people may want it, but noone is required to use it.
GP here -- I never installed it either; I discovered this antifeature on someone else's computer. But the point is, if you write an evil extension, I'm gonna hold you responsible and (to the extent feasible) quit using your other services, whether or not they appear evil, because it means you're a {person,organization} who can't be trusted to make correct judgement calls.
Even if it would do just that, it would still be a step in the right direction.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Having Wikipedia info displayed automatically for a search isn't really a "feature" as far as I'm concerned.
It is when Wikipedia's search is bloody awful, leading you to go to a search engine to find what you're looking for. Honestly, if you don't know the exact title of the page you're looking for, finding it via Wikipedia is fairly difficult. It becomes impossible if you don't know how to correctly spell what you're looking for. However, type it into duckduckgo and you get the Wikipedia page you want right at the top.
Granted, maybe Wikipedia's search has improved. I haven't bothered to use it since two years ago when I discovered that using duckduckgo was far easier.
Even when I'm specifically searching for Wikipedia articles, I usually find a Google search including "wiki" much quicker than Wikipedia's search. I guess it's a simple matter of how much money can be spent on great servers.
what do you expect? it's bing.
On what do you base that statement? (I have only played with DDG briefly, and found it OK, but bing is total crap).
The framers of the Constitution made a flaw that we're beginning to see the consequences of this error:
A violation of the U.S. Constitution is considered a civil issue rather than a criminal issue. Today, you have to sue
to enforce it. Had it been codified as a criminal issue, Bush et. al. would not have been so careless about trashing it,
and many of the things we're seeing today would be in much better check, or non-existent. That means, the people
would have the right to prosecute a violation of the U.S. Constitution in criminal court with consequences that are
meaningful to the offenders (personal jail time, etc.). Right now, if you happen to sway the Supreme Court in your favor,
you haven't actually punished the offenders, just made it a little harder for them to violate the U.S. Constitution in the future.
I fully agree w/ this. I use different browsers, and in IE, I've made Wiki the default and in Firefox, DuckDuckGo the default. In Chrome, I've left it w/ Google. If I want the Wiki explanation of something, I check Wiki, but otherwise, I check other search engines and ignore their Wiki results.
I use Startpage on some of my machines as the default, but it's not as good at Google. Plenty of searches that provide fruitful results in Google return nil results in Startpage.
I've never used DDG in anger; I should probably give it a go.
It's been said above, but boy... the linked article seems SUPER fishy. It's the one and only post on a newly-created blog, just for the purpose of hammering DDG on this issue, apparently. It has a lot of claims that are adamantly delivered but seem really suspicious. For example: The claim that FISA can order real-time intercepts of any data, even data that the company itself doesn't collect during its business operations. (CEO of DDG responds respectfully in comments and blogger slaps him down and calls him a liar.) There's a bunch of things that ping my "don't trust this" alarm.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I use Startpage on some of my machines as the default, but it's not as good at Google. Plenty of searches that provide fruitful results in Google return nil results in Startpage.
I sometimes notice this, do you know what it could be? Are you signed into Google at the time of doing a Google search from Google itself? Startpage results should be apathetic towards personalization as well as location, try deleting your Google cookies and using http://www.google.com/ncr to avoid the GeoIP country redirect.
"a quick google of ..." reveals why DuckDuckGo won't be taking over as the dominant search engine any time soon. Having your brand become a generic term is a nearly insurmountable advantage.
Jesus has been joined by the NSA.
... only maintained by whatever levels of disinterest in one's affairs people around them might have. Because people are generally concerned with their own affairs more than other people's, it can often be fairly easy to hold onto privacy, ironically, in a public place. Although there's nothing in such public places to necessarily keep arbitrary people from seeing or hearing whatever it is you might want to keep private, as long as you aren't doing anything which would actually attract outsidee attention, it's unlikely that anybody around you will be paying enough attention to notice, and you can achieve privacy through apathy.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
One of the things that courts consider when looking at whether communication evidence should be suppressed under the 4th is the measures that the person took to keep the communication private - in short, is there an expectation of privacy? While Duck Duck Go's search engine does not provide perfect opacity, it does provide evidence that you intended to keep your search request private and that you had an expectation of privacy that is worth protection.
>I've never, ever found anything on search engines.
Pity about that, I've found them useful in a variety of subjects, usually topical or technical. Your experience stated at that level of generality could have two causes. (a) You could be searching for some difficult target subject, where the web-objects you want to see just don't have any characteristic searchable 'flag' words with relevant meaning. (b) It could be your search technique, not searching by the 'flag' words that do characterize your subject.
Case (a) would cover subjects where the only characteristic words are heavily used elsewhere too, bringing search results with low 'signal-to-noise ratio'. Examples are person-searches using very common names.
You mention searching for software. Searches in some software areas could be difficult, I guess, if the only 'flag-words' are either pretty much meaningless or over-generalized tokens, or else, words arbitrarily transferred from other contexts in defiance of their usual specific meaning. (Maybe their authors haven't thought about searchability, or else just don't want them to be found in searches.) If that's the special stuff you're searching for then you may be SOL :(
I am Wooldridge! Do not believe the false Wooldridge.
Any AC claiming to be Brett Wooldridge is a liar.
Yaaay! Use MY favorite VPN, Excellent service. No NSA. Promise.
Is there any notion of a peer to peer search engine that could avoid a central server?
Problem is, running through another country, especially one that does not have an NSA-reciprocity deal, is itself most likely a marker to NSA to pay extra attention. Plus doesn't the NSA have full authority to monitor transmissions where at least one side is outside of the USA? Sure, they don't need no steenkin' warrants. But their surveillance becomes arguably even more legal (by US law) and less unconstitutional, if you have voluntarily routed outside of the USA.
I don't disagree with your advice; in fact I do the same thing often, VPNing to Venezuela, or Iceland, or random other countries first, when the sites/transactions I'm using do not require specific IP geolocation. It makes it harder to track, harder to decypher. But I don't think it is all that meaningful, because it puts in more on the NSA "radar". In part, I do it as a big FU to NSA, like a bumper sticker or political billboard. But I have little faith that it makes it all that much more difficult for NSA to determine patterns of my traffic, if they really want to do so. Sure, it keeps my ISP in the dark.
But my ISP is the freakin' government of Uruguay, via Antel, which is the fixed-internet monopoly in this "socialist" country. So I'm on the NSA radar anyhow, as one of those "evil Americans who leave the country". Though "Tio Pepe" Mujica, held for a dozen years in a US-funded jail, two at the bottom of a well, would probably tell them to FOAD anyhow. Just as he is doing to the toady EU countries that denied Evo Morales air overflight, by recalling Uruguay's ambassadors.
It's there, but it just piggybacks off of Google, Bing.
It's about as good as a google search [b]and it gives the wikipedia article for any topic at the top[/b]. My opinion is better than your opinion.
Don't know about you, but when I want to look up something on Wikipedia, I look for it on Wikipedia.
How quaint. I just add "!w"
Actually, it's not 100% wikipedia. It displays smart information on top.
I remember searching for an apache httpd configuration directive last week, and DDG showed a snippet of the documentation on top. It was exactly what I was looking for. It's slightly smart, and rather helpful in general.
Personally, I use DDG as my primary search engine. But when I need to look for very specific issues (why is my commanlink not working with X and Y in JSF), I find that google gives better results. Google still works better if you have lots of keywords or long sentances, but otherwise DDG is enough.
Because if you use regular search and an article of that name isn't there (or a redirect taking you somewhere else from your term) you end up on a page telling you nothing was found for your query, and asking if you want to create a new article on the topic.
Special search will display the results that closely match what you were looking for, in case it's not quite listed the way you thought, or is covered by a subsection of a different article, etc.
At least that's how it was when I set up the Quick Search (many years ago). Maybe Wikipedia has changed the behavior of the search box since then.
After using both DuckDuckGo and StartPage (Ixquick) for months, I switched to PrivateLee a year ago. It provides the most relevant results of the three and includes an image search. The main thing I'm missing are the convenient conversions between measurement units and currencies, but I'm willing to take an extra step for those as long as the vast majority of my searches provide relevant results and respect my privacy.
The secret to PrivateLee's good search results is that they proxy the results from Google and Bing without letting either one know who is the end-user initiating the query.
I find bing to continually be less accurate than even yahoo searches. That says a lot, considering yahoo searches are inaccurate.
This is exactly the behaviour, i want to have. I know how Wikipedia Titles are written, sometimes they have a redirect, and if i really not find the article, i am at least on the wikipedia-site and can use the searchfield there. But most the time i can avoid clicking on search results / following a redirect first.
yeah, you're having some point there ... but on the other hand, count the evil google extensions ...
Hey, I don't think this guy deserved that -1 mod. Sure, his comment is entirely pointless and contributes nothing, but at least he's not pretending to be fair: he admits it right in his nickname!