Just figured this might be some welcome news to shout out from the crow’s nest. Haven’t tried it yet myself, so would love some feedback, me hearties!

  • BootlegHermit@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Eh, DDG is just as shady as most others. Starting with their contract with MS.

    Basing their browser off of chromium (or Edge and “underlying OS technology” or however they phrased it) just helps to further the Google monopoly.

    “DuckDuckGo uses clear gifs from the domain improving.duckduckgo.com. This is a tracking technique and can be used to collect analytics about your web browser. Whenever you use DuckDuckGo, several requests will be sent to this domain.[4] This is of course not the kind of behavior that you would expect from a privacy concerned website, but there it is. Do you trust DuckDuckGo to collect “anonymous” analytics about you?”
    -- From: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/duckduckgo

    Not that I view that quote as fact of any sort, but something to look into before jumping on the bandwagon so to speak.

    Then of course there’s also DDG’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg.

    “Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of DuckDuckGo, used to run the Names Database.[1] This was a website that aimed to connect people who had lost contact by gathering lots and lots of e-mail addresses. Getting access could be done by either paying money, or submitting lots of e-mail addresses of other people. Since the service revolved around gathering personal information, it is very suspicious for Gabriel Weinberg to start a business that is privacy-oriented.”
    From: https://archive.is/20150624075735/https://8ch.net/tech/ddg.html and https://archive.is/N2qe8

    So the real advice as to what browser to use? Use whatever one you want that has the features you like and enjoy. Anything else is a gamble in terms of support, security, compatibility, and usability.

    • stephenc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So wait… when you visit DDG… DDG gets GIFs from… DDG… to track you? You do realize ANY website you go to collects basic information about your browser and connection info, regardless of how “private”, right? Love how you got this from a shady looking site that looks straight out of 1997.

      And oh no, someone did something else in the past. People can change and do different things, you know.

      DDG is about as secure and privacy-focused as we’re going to get, and people still bitch and complain about it.

      Pathetic.