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

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.

Comments

this is based on a forum post?

[GregMmm]

So, one guy on posts on a forum a certain API is being blocked by his Firefox extension CanvasBlocker. Not that the one individual has anything showing some tracking and data gathering, he just sees an API being used. Without any real evidence what so ever. Sounds like someone wants to sow seeds of mistrust at DuckDuckGo.

Re:Silly name

[OneHundredAndTen]

Because of the aforementioned not-tracking stuff? And the results are as good as Google.

In my experience they are not. Not even close. I wish I could ditch Google, but DuckDuckGo cannot (yet) fill Google's search shoes.

Re:The problem with DuckDuckGo

[gringer]

Use "!g " in the DDG search box to initiate a google search with those terms.

The inevitable attack could be a good sign

[Lucas123]

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.

Re:Silly name

[ArchieBunker]

They still index torrent sites while google keeps shuffling them further down the listings.

Re:Silly name

[Anonymous Coward]

Google search has become useless for me (search tech related issues) - too many sponsored ads and content farms.

Duck Duck go doesn't have all the advertising, and I am getting useful results when searching for issues.

Sources of DuckDuckGo's revenue

[tepples]

The difference is that while some other services show ads based on interests inferred from your previous viewing history, DuckDuckGo shows ads based only on the context of your search query. DuckDuckGo also adds its referral tag to Amazon product URLs in search results.

(Source: "How Does DuckDuckGo Make Money? DuckDuckGo Business Model Explained")

Why use !g when you can use !sp

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use !sp instead, you can use Startpage, which anonymizes Google search results.

Re:Silly name

[AmiMoJo]

That's not the right syntax for Google, hasn't been for years. The syntax is now that double quotes mean the search term must appear on the page for it to be included in the results. So double quotes are like a logical AND, everything else is logical OR but obviously heavily weighted.

You correct search term should be:

"ibanez" "rb-800"

First result looks correct but I don't know much about guitars.