DuckDuckGo Gets The Apple Love

[Brett_Tabke]

DuckDuckGo got a major boost today by being endorse by Apple. The new Safari privacy setting features DuckDuckGo, :

New features to protect your privacy.

Safari now gives you more control over your privacy on the web. You can open one Safari window in Private Browsing mode — which doesn’t save your browsing history — while keeping others in regular browsing mode. So while you do your online banking privately in one window, your browsing history is still being saved while you surf in another. You can also now search the web using DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track you.

[apple.com...]

[n0tSEO]

Good to know! In my eyes, that's plus points for Apple. ;)

[SincerelySandy]

It would be sooooo nice to have a balance of power in the world of search engines. Go Duck, GO!

[Swanny007]

Nice! DDG is my search default on my Mac.

[not2easy]

I switched to Ixquick a few years ago for the same reasons. No more targeted ads based on searches and views. It is my understanding that both DDG and Ixquick use results from several search engines' crawlers and don't run their own bots. SERPS are closer to what you search for as a plus. I need to take a new look at DDG now.

[graeme_p]

My reservation bout DuckDuckGo is that because its sells it self on privacy, governments are more likely to keep an eye on people who use it. Simply be using it you look suspicious.

[dstiles]

Isn't it SSL? Ixquick is. I know it's theoretically crackable but it takes a fair bit of power to do it. Assuming it's a safe encryption option, of course.

[J_RaD]

startpage.com

another great one.

My reservation bout DuckDuckGo is that because its sells it self on privacy, governments are more likely to keep an eye on people who use it. Simply be using it you look suspicious.

keep an eye on what? encrypted traffic that is instantly dumped? thats not much to watch.

[not2easy]

When I started using Ixquick, I found out that startpage.com is the "US version" of Ixquick search. Back when Google was a baby, there was a different kind of service called vivisimo, now they provide search services for business, but they left a little one called clusty.com that is still out there. Those provide cluster results and for many searches they work better. There are many choices but most people use the "defaults" when they get new devices.

[micklearn]

Really glad to see DDG get some more attention.

There are many choices but most people use the "defaults" when they get new devices.

Very true, and also worth mentioning is the Adobe Flash update page with the checked box to download Chrome and make it the default browser - which I imagine many people overlook before they click to update Flash.

[not2easy]

@micklearn, Just curious about where you are seeing the Chrome download. The Adobe download site does not have anything but a Trial Offer for Adobe Lightroom showing and you would need to check the box. There are some non-official sites out there known to bundle unwanted things with a download (and some with outdated Flash downloads) so it is important to update only from the Adobe site. Some of the unofficial sites are using PPC for top placement, one of them offering v.11 (pretty old for Win/Mac).

[micklearn]

@not2easy, I'm seeing it here: [get.adobe.com...] using IE11. I manually check for updates once a month or so and have been seeing the checked box for at least a year.

[not2easy]

Thanks for the info. I'll see what I can find out. Sorry all - didn't mean to move the discussion off the topic at hand. Any more on the Adobe Chrome question will be in another thread.

[graeme_p]

@dstiles, @J_Rad, yes it does use SSL, but:

1) it may flag you for more intense surveillance or your unencrypted traffic (such as non-SSL sites you visit after searching on DDG).

2) Even if SSL is solid (as it often has not been!) it does not guarantee that the rest of DDG's infrastructure is equally safe: for example, are connections between their servers all encrypted? MS and Yahoo have both had unencrypted traffic between data centres until recently.

3) The US government may well be able to force/coerce/persuade DDG to accept some sort of surveillance within its data-centres and prevent them from talking about it. Something like the warrants no one could talk about?

[dstiles]

I used to use startpage but then they started using google as one of the engines. I otherwise liked their outlook so switched so ixquick.

Graeme - yes, I'm aware of those points. I've been following SSL and other security arguments for years and trying to find ways of improving security.

I wonder if DDG and ixquick have been hit by gov requests? If they've done their job properly they may not be able to provide anything other than IP to IP for many accesses anyway. We can but hope.