• stonemilker@discuss.tchncs.de
      7·
      3 years ago

      Their privacy policy and data flow have been the same since the buyout, they were transparent about any implications and the mitigations put in place to protect users, so I’m alright with it. The biggest problem I have with them is sometimes getting rate-limited because of a VPN or Tor, but that’s it. Alternatives like DDG and Brave Search are usually bad for results in my native language, so I’ve been using Startpage for a couple years now and it’s nice

  • FIST_FILLET@lemmy.ml
    182·
    3 years ago

    NO.

    1. it is US-based
    2. 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

  • candle_lighter@lemmy.ml
    15·
    3 years ago

    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.

    • JoelJ@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 years ago

      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!

    • NicoCharrua@lemmy.ca
      4·
      3 years ago

      You can also use ddg.gg which is even shorter!

      And you don’t even need to go the website homepage, just type something like ddg.gg/search promt and 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.

  • codenul@lemmy.ml
    101·
    3 years ago

    Check out Mull browser. There’s mobile version as well for desktops. Its lightweight Firefox without any of the telemetry.

    • snek_boi@lemmy.ml
      4·
      3 years ago

      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 🙃

  • svamp@lemmy.ml
    102·
    3 years ago

    Didn’t DDG get caught allowing some Microsoft tracking and blocking some search results a couple of years back? Personally I use Firefox and starpage as a search engine.

    • Rooki@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 years ago

      The “Privacy Statement” of Brave Search is somewhat weird tbh. Not clear, Obfuscated.

            • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
              11·
              3 years ago

              Edit: My comment below was based on a faulty understanding of how EDDM mailers worked and a faulty assumption I based on that ignorance. What they did in reality is little more than sending out spam mail, it was not a privacy violation.

              Purely from a privacy standpoint, however, there has never been an indication they have violated users’ trust in that regard.

              That’s simply not true though.

              They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak.

              In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,

              In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.

              I hope you consider a customer list leak to be a breach of privacy. And seeing how they didn’t take responsibility but tried to pass blame, they didn’t take such a mistake very seriously or respond in a manner that instills further trust.

                • 133arc585@lemmy.ml
                  21·
                  3 years ago

                  I think you may be right actually. When I read this

                  In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.

                  from their statement, I made an assumption because I didn’t look at how EDDM works. The way I read “not excluding names, but instead including names” was: We sent a list of names to the vendor; the vendor was supposed to exclude those names, and mail to everyone else in the ZIP, but instead, they mailed to only those names. It seems that’s not an accurate understanding of the situation. I think the correct reading is: we said “no names” on our EDDM mailers but they acted as if we said “yes names” on our EDDM mailers.

                  From my original interpretation, that is essentially a customer list leak, or at least a ‘localized’ customer list leak, especially for anyone in a shared living environment where someone else may see the name printed on a Brave mailer and learn that that person is a Brave user.

                  Thanks for clearing it up though. Let me try to go back and edit a few previous comments where I’ve said this to clarify.

  • PlasmaK@lemmy.ml
    41·
    3 years ago

    DDG still spies on you. It still better than google, i guess, but i personaly use disroot’s searx

    • auth@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 years ago

      undefined> Brav

      Brave is impressive, and they use their own index unlike DDG

    • _pete_@lemmy.world
      3·
      3 years ago

      Their software is very early and honestly not quite fully baked yet.

      The search engine is great though!

  • rikonium@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    3 years ago

    I ditched it after it dropped the operators like quotes, “OR”, “AND”, and “-” which hampers it’s usefulness to me.

  • cadellin@lemmy.ml
    2·
    3 years ago

    I use DDG every day as my default search engine across desktop & mobile. It’s good but the search isn’t as always as helpful as Google. If you need to you can just add !g to the search terms and get redirected to Google.