NO.
- it is US-based
- the CEO is the former founder of the “Names Database”
for the love of god, use anything but DDG. Qwant is EU-based and has decent results, SearX is another one which lets you choose between instances (or host your own).
please stop taking US “privacy” services seriously. i was hoping people would know better on here, compared to reddit
Kagi for the win!
Does not really matter. US can ask another countrys authorities for information. Just look at what happend with protonmail
It is US based LOL!!!
Does not really matter. US can ask another countrys authorities for information. Just look at what happend with protonmail
DDG was known as the best option for search engines but then they started talking of censoring stuff and also it has Microsoft trackers and other problems. Yes, it is still better than Google, Bing and Yandex when talking of privacy but with search engines like Qwant and specially SearX (SearXNG) there’s no reason to use DDG over these.
Honestly yeah. There’s been some controversies in the past, but for someone who’s looking for a zero-effort way to browse privately and support the privacy scene (DDG donates a lot of money) it’s a great choice. Wouldn’t recommend their browser/extensions though
Definitely would agree with this. The best of a bad bunch. I use it for nearly all my search.
Did see some sketchy stuff with the android app/browser so probably would avoid… and besides, I’m in a decades long relationship with firefox <3.
Do you use Firefox on mobile as well? I use the DDG browser and don’t whether I should switch. Haven’t heard what exactly is wrong with it, yet.
Exactly, there’s just no reason to use anything other than firefox on desktop
On mobile IN MY EXPERIENCE Firefox has always been unbearably slow. I’ve tried everything: getting it from play store, F-Droid and github, using the beta and nightly version, tried it with and without extensions: it sometimes took 10+ seconds to load some pages, I don’t know why. It’s been like this on other smartphone models too.
That’s why I use brave from mobile, it’s blazing fast and it has a lot of nice features, starting from the amazing bottom bar to their solid integrated adblocker and dark mode.
Compared to Chrome their browser is probably better for privacy and also zero-effort, if you can get past the lack of features. I think using it as a private/incognito window is pretty feasible, but yeah, it’s hard to recommend as a default browser
Why not use Firefox for a privacy browser?
I’m OOTL on DDG donations? What kinds of projects/people do they donate to, and how does that benefit pirates?
I’m sorry for the confusion, with “privacy scene” I meant orgs that fight for privacy/freedom on the internet, like Tor, EFF, Fight for the future and more. You can see who they donated to from their blog https://spreadprivacy.com/2022-duckduckgo-charitable-donations/
For those who still don’t know and find DDG’s name too long to type out than google, you can just input duck.com and it will redirect you to DDG!
It’s my main search in my browser, so I don’t even type it. Would strongly recommend.
You can also use ddg.gg which is even shorter!
And you don’t even need to go the
websitehomepage, just type something likeddg.gg/search promtand it’ll give you results straight away.This is great even if you use a different search engine because you can use !bangs without needing to go through another webpage.
Been using DDG for many years and never new this!
DDG still spies on you. It still better than google, i guess, but i personaly use disroot’s searx
Got a link?
DDG states in their privacy policy they dont store any of your search results and doesnt sell your Data. But yeah searx(ng) is still better
I ditched it after it dropped the operators like quotes, “OR”, “AND”, and “-” which hampers it’s usefulness to me.
I’ve been using DDG as my default search as it works with ExpressVPN, Google often requires captcha or sign in.
No. Plus the founder is pro-censorship and weighting search results based on his own worldview.
At this point Searx is the only viable option, both in terms of privacy and results. Yes it ultimately ends up using the backend of the big three, but with customizable layers of abstraction and behaviour.
Check out Mull browser. There’s mobile version as well for desktops. Its lightweight Firefox without any of the telemetry.
And for people who need chromium, there’s mulch, a hardened chromium fork with some security patches from vanadium
Thanks for the recommendation. I wonder if you’re confusing the DuckDuckGo browser with the DuckDuckGo search engine. I am assuming the post is about the search engine 🙃
They didn’t define what they mean. Could be both.
It’s better than google, and so it’s a good start.
Yeah but I find their search results aren’t as good an non-private options like Google. So I’ve always preferred search private engines that provide Google results. Startpage is a great one but if you want one that is open source LibreX is excellent and is better than other FOSS search engines like SearX and Whoogle IMO.
expired
Google’s search monopoly is hurting the Internet generally speaking by stifling innovation and pushing normal users into it’s ecosystem by paying companies like Apple billions to make it the default search.
https://www.makeuseof.com/why-google-pays-apple-billions-of-dollars/
My grandmother has been using Google everyday for a decade on her iPhone and didn’t even know until I changed the default settings. We need competitors in this space to make the internet a better place and using any search engine that relies completely on Google’s SEO is perpetuating their market dominance. Hopefully, Google pulls a Reddit like move and makes it ridiculously expensive to access their search services, the way they’re currently experimenting with YT ad blocking.
Then competitors will have to move away from Google’s evil empire making life better for everyone.
You know I’ve been using both DDG and google for years, google on my work computer and DDG at home. I too have found google is a little better, but the past few weeks at work I’ve have occasionally found the google results insufficient, so I’ve tried DDG on a whim and it’s actually given me better results!
What’s wrong with startpage.com?
Starpage was bought by an advertising company.
It is not perfect, but its a good balance in terms of privacy and search results. If you have a high treath model consider making your own self hosted searx search engine ( while using tor if needed ) to further enhance your privacy
I’m curious: Isn’t Searx(ng) a bit less useful if you’re the only person using it? I thought that pooling of searches make it harder to run targetting algorithms.
Exactly, one can self host if they want, but if their aim is to limit user profiling, they should absolutely make their instance public so they can get mixed traffic through it
No wtf. If you use tor and searx you will not look like everyone else. The whole point of tor is to make everybody look the same. The only configuration in tor that should be made is the security setting
There is a difference if you want to make yourself look like everyone by design or if you use Tor, if you use Tor your real identity can not be traced back to you so there is no point in making yourself look like everyone else. But then again this is only for individuals that have high-threat models.
Torproject themself does not recommend changeing settings since it makes you stand out. It is much worse if you are self hosting searx and using it in tor since searx is then linked to you since you are selfhosting it.
This comment is worded very optimistic. There are plenty of ways to leak your identity using tor. Or any other tech for that matter.
Yeah so there is no reason to make it worse. Torproject themself does not recommend changeing settings It will make you stand out.
For the good balance between privacy and search results i prefer brave over ddg. It gives better results imo. Still use ddg for images
I recently started using Kagi. The search result are super good, and no ads. You do have to pay tho. Another good one I like is presearch. Both of these have their own crawler, unlike most other search engines which rely on bing or Google.
Plus one for Kagi.
It’s pretty decent!
