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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."
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.
This is one, gigantic, "no shit, sherlock".
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.
Really. If they want the information, they get it. Either you turn it over willingly, or they take it forcefully via legal means or just go above you to your host. There is nothing you can do about it.
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.
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.
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.
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 !
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.