More People Than Ever Are Using DuckDuckGo; Site Says It Observed 14M Searches in One Day This Month (betanews.com) 210
An anonymous reader shares a BetaNews article: A lot of people are more privacy aware than they have been in the past, and are wary of entrusting everything they search for to Google. That's where privacy-focused sites like DuckDuckGo come in. Its growth since it launched 8 years ago has been nothing short of staggering, with the number of searches skyrocketing since 2013, when Edward Snowden first revealed how the US government was spying on its people. The search site says it has to date served up over 10 billion anonymous searches, with 4 billion of those occurring in the last year alone, and the company says it is growing faster than ever. On January 10 2017, the site received in excess of 14 million private searches.
Until the money runs out... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Company folds due to lack of funds
2. Company sells or reorganizes to collect funds and starts divulging user data to do so.
3. Governments come in and either silently snoop or shut them down.M
Yeah, I am a cynic and have little faith in humanity. Sorry.
Re:Until the money runs out... (Score:4, Informative)
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250k is nothing.
I think you and I budget differently.
Re:Until the money runs out... (Score:5, Informative)
I do not know how DDG is funded.
DuckDuckGo earns revenue in two ways:
Serving ads from the Yahoo–Bing search alliance network, and
Affiliate relationships with several companies
Re:Until the money runs out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Affiliate relationships with several companies
That's a pretty vague statement. I don't claim to know anything about DDG, or how they are funded, but that statement to me smells a lot like what Parent Post is concerned about. When your only product is data about what your customers are searching for, what do these "affiliates" have to gain by giving DDG money? Unless these affiliates are just handing over cash, without expecting anything in return.
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Affiliate relationships with several companies
So, they're selling your data too in other words.
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Re:Until the money runs out... (Score:5, Informative)
uMatrix shows that 100% of the resources being loaded in a DuckDuckGo search are first-party. There are no external scripts, tracking cookies, or other cross-site references of any sort. The first-party cookies they set are opt-in, entirely optional, and contain no identifiable information. The affiliate stuff is just the Amazon and eBay affiliate programs that anyone can sign up for (i.e. they add parameters to Amazon and eBay URLs to identify DDG as the referrer, that way they get a kickback, but it can't be tied back to you or your search).
Their privacy policy [duckduckgo.com] is written in plain English and--particularly in the three sections about information (not) collected and shared--makes it abundantly clear that they go out of their way to avoid collecting anything remotely related to you in the first place, that way they never have to face people being concerned about the retention loopholes you're talking about. They even offer tips for how you can help prevent information leakage and point out some ways that you may leak information if you choose to disable the protections they've put in place by default.
I get the cynical attitude, but at least look into things a bit before you wantonly smear one of the few companies that's actually trying to do right by their users when it comes to privacy.
Re:Until the money runs out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Until the money runs out... (Score:5, Informative)
That's a loophole worth considering, to be sure, but I don't think it's actually a concern in practice, given that their Information Shared section [duckduckgo.com] lists the data they share (i.e. nothing) and the conditions under which they share it (i.e. only when there's a court order). Suffice to say, if they were sharing info in the manner you described, they'd be obligated to disclose it there.
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They've posted the details about how they make money [duck.co], which basically boil down to two things:
1) They show clearly-identified ads (unless you disable ads in your settings) at the top of some search results. The only information they send is your search term, that way they can get relevant ads. They never send anything identifying or that would allow Bing/Yahoo (the source of the ads) to target you specifically.
2) They modify eBay and Amazon links to make them affiliate links, just like you'd see on review s
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Re:Until the money runs out... (Score:5, Informative)
Basically the way it works is if you search and the link ends in ebay or amazon or another one of their partners, it adds something to the url like "&from=dg" . Then they get either a small amount from the click, or it saves in a cookie/hidden form field, whatever "I came from duck duck go" so that your purchase yields a small percent.
Anyone who tried to make money from their personal website in the late-90s early 2000s probably remembers this model. It's old. And doesn't track you (It doesn't include WHAT you searched for, just that you found the item and you got there from duck duck go)
Re:Until the money runs out... (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're selling your attention without selling your information. As they make abundantly clear in their privacy policy [duckduckgo.com] (that's written in refreshingly plain English by the site's founder himself, no less), they modify links to some product pages to make them into affiliate links (i.e. they get a kickback for referring you to product pages at Amazon and eBay).
Their Information Shared section [duckduckgo.com] is a quick read. After they explain that they don't share any info, but that you might inadvertently leak search terms to the sites you click on if you purposefully disable protections DDG enables by default, they then have this great snippet that demonstrates the sort of mindset they follow:
Also, like anyone else, we will comply with court ordered legal requests. However, in our case, we don't expect any because there is nothing useful to give them since we don't collect any personal information.
Moreover, you can disable advertising for DuckDuckGo if you want (it's a setting you can toggle). Oh, and all of those settings I'm talking about? They only ever exist client-side and aren't linked to an account or identity in any way. You either pass them in as a set or URL parameters or as a cookie that contains no identifiable information. In fact, in a quick check of the site via uMatrix (with ads disabled), it shows that 100% of the resources served are first-party, so there isn't a single external Javascript or tracking cookie being set by sleazy advertisers or people outside their control.
If you're still concerned, here are the details about how they make money [duck.co], which make it abundantly clear (again, in plain English) how they make money without selling their users' information.
Honestly, if you want to complain about DDG, the biggest issue remains the quality of their results. They finally got "good enough" for me, so I switched to them about a year ago and haven't regretted it, and they've only been getting better since then (e.g. they'll oftentimes have the top-rated StackOverflow answer displayed as a pull-out at the top of the search results), but there's still room for improvement (e.g. longer search terms produce noisy results for me). That said, the fact that they offer bangs [duckduckgo.com] makes it drop-dead simple to deal with those situations (i.e. add "!g" to your search to Google it instead). Plus, the fact that I can set them as my default search engine in Chrome/iOS/etc. means that no matter where I am, I can just use the bangs for Amazon (!a), Wikipedia (!w), Google Maps (!gm), Rotten Tomatoes (!rt), or whatever else to immediately jump to the results at those sites, rather than having to first navigate to them.
It's a great site that's continually getting better, and I would strongly encourage others to give it a shot or try it again if it's been awhile since the last time they tried it.
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You're very welcome. I like to think that Slashdot is one of the few places where we can still find posts like these, so inasmuch as I can contribute to that ideal, I like to do so.
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Actually the way it most often happens is. New company with good management provides quality services at a low price with tight profit margins and grows and grows. Along comes a dick bag douche psychopath and quite simply pays more for the company than it is worth with the cooperation or corrupt psychopathic banksters. Once bought they, cut services, cheapen and offshore labour, force up prices, get rid of support and basically trade on betrayed trust with the customer base. Once the profits have been bump
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There's no problem with ads when they are done in an ethical way. There's a huge market for ethical advertising and I think THAT is where the value is. If only companies realized that.
Who gets to decide what's ethical?
Google as last choice (Score:5, Insightful)
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I used to have that view. But truth is you can't live in a bubble. Well maybe you can, but you shouldn't have to. I treat FB like walking down the street. If I wouldn't say it in public I don't say it there. I logout of FB when I am not using it. I am still relatively sure they are tracking me if I logout so my whole approach to online is using my public persona. As for Twitter, the communication is limited. With FB you can at least share with family and friends. Twitter is just a bunch of people ta
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Of course FB is a bubble, but that's not what I was talking about. The bubble I am referring to is his ideology, one I actually share to a certain extent. As for your sidewalk comment, in my case it seems like the vast majority of my friends and family are then hanging around in front of his house, I am much more likely to find them there then out in the world.
Truth is, I spend only a few minutes a day on FB, and that is to interact with people I care about (say hi, give them a like or encouragement, shar
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Re:Great search engine (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends how you search. I know how to search. Google used to let me search well. Then they changed that.
"Yeah, I know you put all 5 of those words on there, but how about just two of them, and a vague 3rd-level synonym for a third?"
or "Hey, I know you put that error message in quotes. But I didn't get any ad results related to that, so I just decided to remove 3/4 of the words and replace them with 'lose weight now'
If you need that, sure, use google. If you actually know what you're searching for, use ddg.
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I have never had the kind of experience you describe with Google. Not once.
I've never had a positive search experience with DDG.
Not once.
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A search on google for "Google no longer respects quotes" shows that in April 2012 (first result) google stopped obeying quotes. So it's been longer than I thought.
Basically, you're probably searching for things like "Buy new tv" or "What good show now tv", and I'm looking more for obscure error messages, quotes, etc. Like I said, google is okay for some things, just not when you know exactly what you want, and don't want your result to be tailored toward a profile built from your browsing and other search
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For now, until the SEO locusts find out that people start using that engine.
So maybe we should be quiet about it. let the SEOs mess with the results.
DDG == Google yet, but improving. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm finding that more recently, however, that DDG is "good enough" in most cases. I still go back and forth because I'm too impatient, but DDG always gets the first shot - and I don't go back very often.
So, if you tried DDG in the past and found their results wanting, you should give it another try.
For comparison (Score:5, Informative)
For comparison purposes, Google hasn't said exactly how many searches it handles recently, but in 2012 it said it handled 1.2 trillion searches [internetlivestats.com] (or averaging 3.3B/day, 137M/hour, 2.2M/minute, 38k/second). It's estimated they handle over 2T per year now [searchengineland.com] (5.5B/day, 228M/day, 3.8M/hour, 63K/second). So Google likely handles in 2 days what DDG has done in 8 years.
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DDG is still small fry compared to google. I think most people TRY duck duck go, hoping to switch (I know I did), the problem is, when you do try using them you quickly find how inferior they are as a search engine.
I really hope they improve and become a true competitor (even if I don't trust any tech company is really privacy-first), right now though, they're not very good. I went with DDG for a month- but then switched back to the big evil that is Google.
Re:For comparison (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm unfortunately in the same boat, but I think it does also depend on what you're looking for. I'd wager that if a lot of people had their default search engine changed to DDG, they'd probably fine. Let's be real, "facebook" and "facebook.com" are very common searches because most people have forgotten the distinction between a search bar and an address bar, so typing URLs in a Google/MSN search is probably a solid third of their traffic. DDG would probably be just fine for this sort of thing; people sure didn't notice when their default search got changed to Trivoli or the dozen other browser hijackers that were making their rounds a few years ago.
Where DDG comes up very short, however, is in more specialized searches. If you're looking for a code snippet or an outdated version of some app or something more specific and technical, DDG is a crapshoot at best and useless at worst. I mean, I can't really blame them - Bing is still inferior at this point and they have thrown Microsoft quantities of money at the problem. Search is hard - there was a decade prior to Google where Altavista and Lycos were doing their best with plenty of money and lots of talent, and they were still beaten by Google.
Ironically, DDG might get better relative to Google because Google results have continued their downward spiral toward the lowest common denominator. Just yesterday, I was trying to find out if anyone else with my particular TV was able to get the Android app "AnyRemote" to send the right IR code. I went to Google to search the model number with 'anyremote', and Google seemed to thoroughly ignore the existence of 'anyremote' in my search query, instead showing me physical remote controls, even when I put anyremote in quotes.
If Google continues this behavior, it's only a matter of time before they end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, giving DDG inroads to increase their market share. The ultimate question is, however, whether the revenue they get while retaining their staunch privacy directives is enough to keep them profitable, or if they will have to compromise their privacy policy, be bought out by someone who does not share their values, or make some other rough choices to keep themselves afloat.
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Yep. Just last week I saw someone searching for their bank through Google rather than typing it in the address bar. I explained why it's bad to do that in layman-friendly terms and all I got was a blank stare.
It doesn't help that some browsers are combining the search and address bar; these really should be kept separate.
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That's really not a bad idea, thanks!
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The good thing about a search engine is that it is a tool that works equally well regardless of whether others have adopted it or not. This is quite distinct from tools that gain their value through some sort of interaction with data created by other users of the tool.
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That gives Google the revenue to be far more evil than DDG. They have a full engineering team devoted to determining your race, your religion, level of education, income, and so on. If you're worried about Trump wanting a "Muslim registry", you should at least be vaguely concerned that Google already has one.
Another Google Alternative (Score:2)
https://www.qwant.com/ [qwant.com]
Results are quite good and seem to be a bit better than duckduckgo sometimes. Uses more fancy javascript, but has more fancy features as well and the same promise of no data collection.
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I found qwant in my referer logs as well, because it got me visitors ;-).
But i have the hang to type "!g search term" in these search engines (which i use via urlbar shortcut anyway).
From the quality:
- Google
- Bing/Yandex
- qwant
- duckduckgo
For some terms ddg before qwant. Yandex and Bing are very good alternatives when google finds only the seo spam sites or big companies.
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yandex seems to cover the web like most other search engines do. Maybe you encounter some russian censorship, but on the other hand russia doesn't care much about stuff like dmca notes *hinthinthint*
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My wife, who is Russian, also speaks English and Spanish. I find your surprise surprising.
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Easy to Change Duck Duck Go to your Default (Score:2)
If you are running Firefox, it is easy to change your default search engine to Duck Duck Go. They have made it one of the pull down search menu options.
I've been using it to search for months now, and I don't notice much difference. Highly recommend.
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Ditto, I switched perhaps six months ago. I will say sometimes DDG will give you daft results and you'll have to resort to Google, but out of that six months, I only recall having to use Google three times.
... but it never STAYS the default (Score:2)
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Great for TPB (Score:3, Informative)
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Searching for "TPB" gives me thepiratebay.org as first hit on google, on ddg I get it as the eight search result behind a lot of proxies. With "thepiratebay" the table is turned and thepiratebay.org is now the ninth search result on google while it's the first one on ddg. This was done with google "safe search" turned off. I would be interested to know more in detail how your search results differs from mine.
I prefer duckduckduckgo (Score:3)
Since I am concerned that duckduckgo might leak search information, I prefer duckduckduckgo, which uses duckduckgo internally, but hides my searches even better. Should we ever find that duckduckduckgo is also storing personal information, we could always create duckduckduckduckgo, which would solve the problem once and for all.
WARNING potential malware site (Score:2)
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Well crap, I just gave them some traffic. Sorry!
its awesome (Score:2)
Using it as primary search for years, do tens of searches a day and have rarely any problem. I still use !i for google image search which i find useful, but other than that I am 100% DDG user for years.
Only problem i ever had is that it constantly prompts you to install the search bar for ddg. But i blame this on not accepting permanent cookies or noscript usage or some combination of the two. Google is even worse at trying to get you using chrome and the toolbars and all that, its beyond intrusive with the
duckduckgo vs startpage comparison (Score:2)
http://securityspread.com/2016... [securityspread.com]
Google is CAPTCHAed (Score:2)
Ecosia (Score:2)
Users getting tired of spying and censorship? (Score:2)
Would not be surprised to see people move away from youtube, facebook, and twitter, as well.
DuckyDuck (Score:2)
Re:But we have Trump now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But we have Trump now (Score:5, Insightful)
100% better than a president lying to your face
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Re:But we have Trump now (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump will get rid of all the spying. Thank you Trump.
When Obama was campaigning in '07 he said he would end the spying on U.S. citizens. And have the most transparent government ever. And close Gitmo.
I actually heard the speech this morning on talk radio.
I don't even care what Trump's stance is on domestic spying, because the alternative was Hillary. And rules don't apply to a Clinton. Rules like the Constitution.
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Trump will get rid of all the spying. Thank you Trump.
When Obama was campaigning in '07 he said he would end the spying on U.S. citizens. And have the most transparent government ever. And close Gitmo.
Two things there:
(1) Congress prevented him.
(2) Candidate Obama, once elected, adapted to fit the political reality. Candidate Trump seems so far to keep wanting to distort reality to conform to his fragile ego.
I actually heard the speech this morning on talk radio.
I don't even care what Trump's stance is on domestic spying, because the alternative was Hillary. And rules don't apply to a Clinton. Rules like the Constitution.
But the constitution does apply to Trump?
Almost noble (Score:3, Informative)
When Obama was campaigning in '07 he said he would end the spying on U.S. citizens. And have the most transparent government ever. And close Gitmo.
Two things there:
(1) Congress prevented him.
(2) Candidate Obama, once elected, adapted to fit the political reality. Candidate Trump seems so far to keep wanting to distort reality to conform to his fragile ego.
About 6 months prior to Obama's first term election, he completely flip-flopped [politifact.com] on telecom immunity.
As a result, Obama received greater telecom campaign donations, which helped him spend more money on his campaign.
That's an example of a politician "adapting to fit political reality", and the political climate was so corrupt that your candidate felt comfortable betraying a promise several months before the election!
Framing "betraying campaign promises" as "adapting to fit the political reality" makes it seem
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Even before being elected he called for his opponents to be hacked
No, he did not. He pointed out that if someone wants the 30k emails Hillary erased then ask Russia. Because Russia most certainly has them. And given that the emails she did hand over were enough to put a normal person in prison, Putin has some serious dirt on Hillary.
Spinning that into Trump calling for Russia to hack democrats is complete bullshit.
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... given that the emails she did hand over were enough to put a normal person in prison ...
I keep hearing people repeat this (probably because they keep hearing it repeated on talk radio and such), but I have never actually heard any specifics. Can you please tell me what it was that she did exactly, and which law that action broke (please cite specific statute), the breaking of which would normally have lead to a conviction and incarceration?
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Can you please tell me what it was that she did exactly
Me too, I always wondered what are these emails? What dirt do they contain? If Hillary is so bad, then how come her opponents never deliver the "goods." It's always generalizations and commentaries. How come Clinton never gives a brief concise answer without the need for a scripted choreographed answered subject to interpretation.
While they are at it, can they also find Jimmy Hoffa, Bigfoot, Nessie, and all the missing socks.
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...as harperska presented above, the documents were on an authorized server and an authorized laptop.
Perhaps stupidly placed there, but under statute not illegal and thus not criminal since a law was not broken.
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Unauthorized Removal And Retention Of Classified Documents Or Material
18 U.S.C. 1924
Class: A Misdemeanor
Possible Penalty: Imprisonment for 1 year and/or $100,000 fine
Text: “Knowingly removing materials containing classified information of the United States with the intent to retain said info at an unauthorized location without the authority to do so”
All classified or later classified emails retained on her personal email server and also Huma's Laptop violate this statute. Having a non sanctioned storage device is arguably a violation as well.
There are two issues. Clinton's server, and Abedin's laptop.
Regarding the server, I have bolded a very relevant part of the statute, namely "unauthorized location". It was the FBI's conclusion that as Clinton was the boss, if she directed information to be stored in a particular location, that location was by definition an authorized location. Comey's analysis was that the aforementioned authorized location was damn stupid, but as the law doesn't specifically forbid stupidity, there was nothing prosecuta
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harperska
I hear this debate a lot and your points seem well thought out and logical.
I have yet to hear a cogent argument which would hold up in a court.
Most likely there has never been a case because of the easy to understand info you have laid out.
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Re:And they're improving, too (Score:5, Insightful)
but if Google is Photoshop, DDG is an Etch-A-Sketch.
This is an excellent analogy, especially if all you need to get the job done is an Etch-A-Sketch. In most cases, the less complicated the tool is the more effective it is at accomplishing its intended purpose. Which is going to be a better tool for pounding in nail? A hammer or this [dhgate.com]?
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That's a good analogy assuming that Google is cutting corners.
But just like trying to draw circles with an Etch-A-Sketch, quite often when you have a nail you'd prefer the multi-tool, especially when faced with something like this. [buytra.com]
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"They can't NOT improve. It looks and behaves like a first-year CompSci student's summer project."
~shrug~ It looks like google did when it was still good.
Yearning for Photoshop v1.0 (Score:2)
Sometimes Etch-A-Sketch is better, Photoshop has a multi GiB installation size, a growing hodgepodge of not very unified tools because they grew there and can't change cos user-base, requires a subscription service and insists on "managing" your media library and by extension you life... You yearn for the power and simplicity of Photoshop v1.0, but it's no longer available, enough is enough - you say fuck Photoshop and you settle for an Etch-A-Sketch, spend more time actually drawing things rather than bein
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They can't NOT improve. It looks and behaves like a first-year CompSci student's summer project. I applaud the spirit behind what they are doing, but if Google is Photoshop, DDG is an Etch-A-Sketch.
I hear just complaint just often enough to suspect astroturfing. I've never had a problem with DDG search results - well, no more problem than I have with Google. Plus there's a lot of good bang commands that give me a better command line in my search box, starting with !wa to use the wonderful Wolfram Alpha site.
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Well, when you make hyperbolic claims with no supporting details or evidence, expect skepticism.
And Microsoft was in fact paying people to do the very same with Linux back in the day, when the term "astroturf" was invented and Linux had a similar market share on the desktop to DDG's. Also, Google does all evil things, so I'm sure they're doing this evil thing.
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For 1, I think they are audited by a third party. But yeah, at some point you have to trust. You can see that there are no ids on the cookies they send, but they could be browser fingerprinting.
For 2, they see ads, not tracking. That is, if you search for lawn mowers, they show ads for lawn mowers, and get a kickback if you go to sears from the DDG search results and buy a lawnmower. If you search for ice cream, you'll get ads for ice cream. What they do NOT do, is show you lawn mower ads when you're
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Well said. My mum used to keep geese. They're definately psycho.
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Interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"YaCy (pronounced "ya see") is a free distributed search engine, built on principles of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.[1][2] Its core is a computer program written in Java distributed on several hundred computers, as of September 2006, so-called YaCy-peers. Each YaCy-peer independently crawls through the Internet, analyzes and indexes found web pages, and stores indexing results in a common database (so called index) which is shared with other YaCy-peers using pri
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