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DuckDuckGo Denies Using Fingerprinting To Track Its Users (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the setting-the-record dept.

Mark Wilson writes: Responding to a forum post that accused it of 'fingerprinting users', privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo says that fears are unfounded and that it is not tracking its users. The allegation was made after the Firefox extension CanvasBlocker showed a warning to users. The suggestion of fingerprinting -- gathering as much information as possible about a user through their browser to create a unique identifier that can be used for tracking -- is clearly something that would seem to sit in opposition to what DuckDuckGo claims to stand for. The company CEO says the accusation is simply wrong.

3 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Silly name by mattyj · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Because of the aforementioned not-tracking stuff? And the results are as good as Google, which is apparently a non-goofy name now?

    If you care about your privacy then you use DuckDuckGo.

  2. The inevitable attack could be a good sign by Lucas123 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Support Duckduckgo.com. I've been using it for years and have seen the amount of spam in my inbox and even social media go WAY down. We need more services like Duckduckgo.com, not fewer.

    But, perhaps the inevitable attack on them is showing some success. I'm hopeful.

  3. Re:The problem with DuckDuckGo by BenFenner · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My experience is the exact opposite. I've been using DuckDuckGo since I moved away from AltaVista, and it has always provided me with the results I desire.

    This is just one example, but search Google for "how many stars in the solar system" and the first handful of results are not related, and the quick-answer is absolutely wrong.
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+many+...

    Search DuckDuckGo for the same and you'll get the right answer in the first result.
    https://lmddgtfy.net/?q=how%20...

    As a bonus, my custom captcha uses these horrible results from Google to weed out bots (and ignorant users I'd rather not have to deal with).