Duck Duck Go

[Saleen836]

Why am I constantly seeing ads for this on tv?

Something about private browsing

[Dracoro]

It’s a search engine, like Google but doesn’t track every single thing you do.

Been using it for years.

[wyson]

Its my goto browser, I use 3 in descending levels of privacy.

Duckduckgo (most private)
Brave
Chrome or Edge (least private)

After a while you start to notice what websites work well on each and it becomes second nature to pick the right one. I use duckduckgo’s email protection forwarding service as well to sign up for stuff that isn’t official.

So some newspaper websites, they have crazy levels of advertising and banners etc. Duckduckgo blocks almost all of it. Its much more pleasant browsing those sites than with a fully featured, less privacy centred browser.

But if I’m doing something like research, where a browsing trail is useful, Duckduckgo is useless because it doesn’t save any kind of browsing history. Then I might switch to Brave.

If I’m trying to use a cashback website, and I want to be tracked up the wazoo, I’ll switch to Edge or Chrome to make sure my purchases track etc.

Edited by wyson on Thursday 19th October 20:26

[wyson]

After taking my privacy seriously, I don’t get any creepy ads etc, where I wonder how they knew that, apart from on Facebook. I can only think the leak is through Whatsapp and some of my contacts have message backups turned on. I tried switching to Signal for a while but people got annoyed. Oh well.

And of course, a bit of creepy advertising is relatively mild, it’s the other stuff that is worrying. I am certain stuff like the Cambridge Analytica scandal is the tip of an iceberg.

Edited by wyson on Friday 20th October 10:01

[rodericb]

Note that DDG has agreements in place with Microsoft for user data.

[xeny]

rodericb said:

Note that DDG has agreements in place with Microsoft for user data.

After some understandably negative feedback, they seem to have significantly reduced them https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/5/23292280/duckduc... . I'm not equipped to judge the privacy situation about the mechanism to measure advertising effectiveness.

[EmailAddress]

wyson said:

Its my goto browser, I use 3 in descending levels of privacy.

Duckduckgo (most private)
Brave
Chrome or Edge (least private)

After a while you start to notice what websites work well on each and it becomes second nature to pick the right one. I use duckduckgo’s email protection forwarding service as well to sign up for stuff that isn’t official.

So some newspaper websites, they have crazy levels of advertising and banners etc. Duckduckgo blocks almost all of it. Its much more pleasant browsing those sites than with a fully featured, less privacy centred browser.

But if I’m doing something like research, where a browsing trail is useful, Duckduckgo is useless because it doesn’t save any kind of browsing history. Then I might switch to Brave.

If I’m trying to use a cashback website, and I want to be tracked up the wazoo, I’ll switch to Edge or Chrome to make sure my purchases track etc.

☜

What they said.

+1