In terms of privacy, this is how the Searxes (meta of meta searches) compares to DDG, Startpage, and Mojeek:

Superficially Metager is privacy respecting and there's even an .onion host for it. So I'll have to add it to the table in the future.

For the moment, I'll say that Metager shares the following with advertisers:

• first 2 blocks of your IP address
• user-agent string
• your search query They say it's for non-personalised advertizing.

matrix for life

The title is copied from the article, it's a little misleading, since the users are given the option of choosing from multiple search engines including DDG, Google and others

(a little late, but a nice addition)

microsoft bad, gnu good

can't wait :)

mobile devices liberated at last

really creepy and scary stuff

This was originally posted on Reddit /r/privacy, but I saw fit to post it here since these issues seem to apply to privacy-oriented communities as a whole.

This sub is about privacy. Every day we get people who are just realizing for the first time just how much of their information is out there beyond their control. They come here looking for help and advice and sometimes to share their successes. Often times they have little or no technical knowledge, let alone an advanced understanding of information security or how to compile their own apps from source, but they want to learn.

So it absolutely fucking pains me when I see gatekeepers shitposting all over newbies. People get downvoted into oblivion for suggesting that it might be difficult for grandma to compile her own Android app instead of installing from the Play store. Comments like "you're a slave if you have a Facebook account" get circle-jerked. Within the past week I've witnessed:

OP: "Where can I find a privacy-respecting news app?" Redditor: "Ugh, why would you even want an app? That's so stupid."

OP: "I'm so happy, I just deleted my Google data!" Redditor: "You're cute, you think they actually deleted it? Guess again, moron."

OP: "I'm leaving Gmail. What do you think of ProtonMail?" Redditor: "Anything less than self-hosted is a waste of time. Why don't you just go back to AOL?"

This attitude does nothing to further privacy. It just makes the redditor look like a jackass gatekeeper. Worse, it makes the community toxic. People come here to learn about privacy. Everyday, regular, not-tech-savvy people. Instead of mocking them for being a "noob", let's welcome them into the fray and help them improve their privacy posture.

Every "noob" we scare off runs back to Google. Report gatekeeping and shitposting when you see it.

Let's pretend there was a consensus of malicious internet companies, and a sufficient number of people wished to strip those companies of their power. That group of people could establish a new network of DNS servers which specifically refuse to resolve the perceived malicious domains.

Let's just take one example. Let's pretend there is a website that serves video content, but this website tracks its users aggressively. Their domain is example.com.

Even some of the users who dislike the example.com service might want to be able to consume the video content, so there could even be proxy servers which would provide access to the content without allowing things like the tracking javascript to leak through.

I'm massively oversimplifying the technical details of how this would be achieved, but I'm just curious if anyone else had considered this possibility.

Maybe DNS is the wrong layer to execute this political action, but I feel like there exists a technical approach to such political action.

Edit: I completely glossed over the SSL/CA implications of the proxying service, not because I don't know the implications exist, but because it's a complicated topic, and I'm not exactly sure how best to resolve it, especially for users who would not understand the risks of sharing things like user credentials over a proxy service like this.

I hope this can serve more as a discussion starting point than a prescription.

One more clarification: I imagine something like one or more Political Action Committees running these DNS servers. That person or group of people would choose a list of domains to blacklist, and deny DNS resolution for those domains or resolve to 127.0.0.1.

I found this video and I will admit that the title definitely triggered me when I saw it. However, it talks about how studies and surveys can reveal information about a group of people, and thus if someone knows that you're apart of that given group, they can infer information about you.

I'd move to hear what you all think. Do you agree with him?

There are substantial privacy and civil liberty issues with DuckDuckGo. Here they are spot-lighted:

• Nefarious History of DDG founder & CEO:
  • DDG's founder (Gabriel Weinberg) has a history of privacy abuse, starting with his founding of Names DB, a surveillance capitalist service designed to coerce naive users to submit sensitive information about their friends. (2006)
  • Weinberg's motivation for creating DDG was not actually to "spread privacy"; it was to create something big, something that would compete with big players. As a privacy abuser during the conception of DDG (Names Database), Weinberg sought to become a big-name legacy. Privacy is Weinberg's means (not ends) in that endeavor. Clearly he doesn't value privacy -- he values perception of privacy.
• Direct Privacy Abuse:
  • DDG was caught violating its own privacy policy by issuing tracker cookies.
  • DDG's app sends every URL you visit to DDG servers. (reaction).
  • DDG is currently collecting users' operating systems and everything they highlight in the search results. (to verify this, simply hit F12 in your browser and select the "network" tab. Do a search with javascript enabled. Highlight some text on the screen. Mouseover the traffic rows and see that your highlighted text, operating system, and other details relating to geolocation are sent to DDG. Then change the query and submit. Notice that the previous query is being transmitted with the new query to link the queries together)
  • DDG is accused of fingerprinting users' browsers.
  • When clicking an ad on the DDG results page, all data available in your session is sent to the advertiser, which is why the Epic browser project refuses to set DDG as the default browser.
  • DDG blacklisted Framabee, a search engine for the highly respected framasoft.org consortium.
• Censorship: Some people replace Google with DDG in order to avoid censorship. DDG is not the answer.
  • DDG is complying with the "celebrity threesome injunction".
• CloudFlare: DDG promotes one of the largest privacy abusing tech giants and adversary to the Tor community: CloudFlare Inc. DDG results give high rankings to CloudFlare sites, which consequently compromises privacy, net neutrality, and anonymity:
  • Anonymity: CloudFlare DoS attacks Tor users, causing substantial damage to the Tor network.
  • Privacy: All CloudFlare sites are surreptitiously MitM'd by design.
  • Net neutrality: CloudFlare's attack on Tor users causes access inequality, the centerpiece to net neutrality.
  • DDG T-shirts are sold using a CloudFlare site, thus surreptitiously sharing all order information (name, address, credit card, etc) with CloudFlare despite their statement at the bottom of the page saying "DuckDuckGo is an Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs." (2019)
  • DDG hired CloudFlare to host spreadprivacy.com (2019)
• Harmful Partnerships with Adversaries of Privacy Seekers:
  • DDG patronizes privacy-abuser Amazon, using AWS for hosting.
    • Amazon is making an astronomical investment in facial recognition which will destroy physical travel privacy worldwide.
    • Amazon uses Ring and Alexa to surveil neighborhoods and the inside of homes.
    • Amazon paid $195k to fight privacy in CA. (also see http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1401518&view=late1)
    • Amazon runs sweat shops, invests in climate denial, etc.. the list of non-privacy related harms is too long to list here.
  • DDG feeds privacy-abuser Microsoft by patronizing the Bing API for search results and uses Outlook email service.
    • Microsoft Office products violate the GDPR (the Dutch government discovered numerous violations)
    • Microsoft finances AnyVision to equip the Israeli military with facial recognition to be used against the Palestinians who they oppress.
    • Microsoft paid $195k to fight privacy in CA. (also see http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1401518&view=late1)
    • DDG hires Microsoft for email service: torsocks dig @8.8.8.8 mx duckduckgo.com +tcp | grep -E '^\w' ==> "...duckduckgo-com.mail.protection.outlook.com"
  • DDG is partnered with Yahoo (aka Oath; plus Verizon and AOL by extension). DDG helps Yahoo profit by patronizing Yahoo's API for search results, and also through advertising. The Verizon corporate conglomerate is evil in many ways:
    • Yahoo, Verizon, and AOL all supported CISPA (unwarranted surveillance bills)
    • Yahoo, Verizon, and AOL all use DNSBLs to block individuals from running their own mail servers, thus forcing an over-share of e-mail metadata with a relay.
    • Verizon and AOL both drug test their employees, thus intruding on their privacy outside of the workplace.
    • Verizon supports the TTP treaty.
    • Yahoo voluntarily ratted out a human rights journalist (Shi Tao) to the Chinese gov w/out warrant, leading to his incarceration.
    • Yahoo recently recovered "deleted" e-mail to convict a criminal. The deleted e-mail was not expected to be recoverable per the Yahoo Privacy Policy.
    • Verizon received $16.8 billion in Trump tax breaks, then immediately laid off thousands of workers.
    • (2014) Verizon fined $7.4 million for violating customers’ privacy
    • (2016) Verizon fined $1.35 million for violating customers’ privacy
    • (2018) Verizon paid $200k to fight privacy in CA. See also this page
    • (2018) Verizon caught taking voice prints?
    • more dirt (scroll down to Verizon)
    • (2016) Yahoo caught surreptitiously monitoring Yahoo Mail messages for the NSA.
• Advertising Abuses & Corruption:
  • DDG consumed a room at FOSDEM 2018 to deliver a sales pitch despite its proprietary non-free server code, then dashed out without taking questions. Shame on FOSDEM organizers for allowing this corrupt abuse of precious resources.
  • Tor Project accepted a $25k "contribution" (read: bribe) from DDG, so you'll find that DDG problems are down-played. This is why Tor Browser defaults to using DDG and why Tor Project endorses DDG over Ss -- and against the interests of the privacy-seeking Tor community. The EFF also pimps DDG -- a likely consequence of EFF's close ties to Tor Project.

For the record, this is how Tor Project responds to criticism about their loyalty toward DuckDuckGo (their benefactor) in IRC:

18:20 < psychil> if torbrowser is going to be recommended, it should also be open to scrutiny. in the absence of that transparency, you create an untrustworthy forum.

18:20 < psychil> we've seen a loyalty from TB toward duckduckgo, but DDG is in partnership with Verizon, Yahoo, AOL et. al.

18:21 < psychil> all CISPA-sponsoring companies

18:22 < psychil> if ppl choose to trust them fair enough, but this trust shouldn't be pushed on every user weighing their choice of browsers

18:26 -!- mode/#tor [-b psychil@!@*] by ChanServ

18:27 < YY_Bozhinsky> psychil: i am using Tor (thanks to Tor Devs)... PLUS brain - good bundle. I am happy. And please, don't rush to change Reality (do it slowly with love and respect). Because it's home for many ppl. They construct their lives in it. Think twice before ruining that. Please.

18:27 -!- mode/#tor [+b psychil!@] by ChanServ

18:27 -!- psychil was kicked from #tor by ChanServ [wont stop the FUD]

Indeed, Tor Project is notoriously fast to censor any discourse (no matter how civil) when it supports a narrative that doesn't align with their view / propaganda.

Qwant sometimes hits Tor users with this puzzle after they submit a query. Then after solving the puzzle, they're brought back to an empty form so they must re-type their query.

AnonAddy - Anonymous Email Forwarding: https://anonaddy.com/