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View Full Version : Does DuckDuckGo and Qwant really respects your privacy?



ardouronerous
August 31st, 2017, 05:36 AM
I've noticed whenever I visit DuckDuckGo and Qwant search engines, my country is revealed on the page, it seems that DDG and Qwant are using geolocation to figure out my country of origin.

Is that normal for a search engine that claims to respect your privacy to use geolocation on their users?

It looks like Startpage and Ixquick respects user privacy even more because whenever I visit, they don't reveal my country on their page, so because of this, I'm dropping DDG and Qwant from my search engine list.

What's your opinion on this?

copify
August 31st, 2017, 06:08 AM
Is that normal for a search engine that claims to respect your privacy to use geolocation on their users?
No one respect privacy, you should.

Bucky Ball
August 31st, 2017, 08:49 AM
Know nothing about Qwant. Never used it. But as far as DuckDuckGo is concerned, probably nothing amiss or to worry about there. You can set it to whatever region you like and it has probably set itself to your region on the strength of the server you are using or ISP. DDG not out to get you, probably just a default region it's picked up, and think you may be over thinking this. You can set it to whatever region you want (see below). ;)

In top right of DDG home page there is a menu icon; three little bars. Click that and then choose 'Other Settings'. Under 'General' there, the first option is to select your region ... or not. My bet is that it is already set to your region. You can set it to 'Any region', adjust any other settings you want and then make yourself a DDG profile which is saved to the cloud by hitting 'Save Settings' (next to 'Load Settings' on left).

Once you have created a profile you can then open DDG on ANY computer, hit 'Other Settings> Load Settings', put in your password for your DDG profile and your settings will be applied. This makes you more secure than default DDG on ANY computer. Don't see how that's a bad thing or means in any way that DDG is trying to track you. They explicitly claim they are not and would be in court fighting numerous charges right now if that was not the case. :)

The home page explicitly states: "The search engine that doesn't track you. Learn More." If you click 'Learn more' then you will find this information:

"We don’t store your personal information. Ever. Our privacy policy is simple: we don’t collect or share any of your personal information."

Why you should think they are 'making this up' I'm not sure. Change the region as explained and see what happens (incidentally, I only use DuckDuckGo and I see no indication of my region anywhere on the home page and never have).

Let us know if that makes any difference.


No one respect privacy, you should.

Obvious and no doubt one of the reasons the OP is posting this. Yea? ;)

ardouronerous
August 31st, 2017, 09:10 AM
My bet is that it is already set to your region.

That's actually my main concern, the fact that DDG knows my location. If DDG is all about anonymous searching, then my location shouldn't ever be recorded, but it is.


Know nothing about Qwant. Never used it. But as far as DuckDuckGo is concerned, probably nothing amiss or to worry about there. You can set it to whatever region you like and it has probably set itself to your region on the strength of the server you are using or ISP. DDG not out to get you, probably just a default region it's picked up, and think you may be over thinking this. You can set it to whatever region you want (see below). ;)

You maybe right, I maybe overthinking this, but my belief is that a search engine that claims to protect privacy and anonymize searches shouldn't be using your ISP to record your region.

At least Startpage and Ixquick doesn't do this, that's why Startpage is my main search engine.


In top right of DDG home page there is a menu icon; three little bars. Click that and then choose 'Other Settings'. Under 'General' there, the first option is to select your region ... or not. My bet is that it is already set to your region. You can set it to 'Any region', adjust any other settings you want and then make yourself a DDG profile which is saved to the cloud by hitting 'Save Settings' (next to 'Load Settings' on left).

Once you have created a profile you can then open DDG on ANY computer, hit 'Other Settings> Load Settings', put in your password for your DDG profile and your settings will be applied. This makes you more secure than default DDG on ANY computer. Don't see how that's a bad thing or means in any way that DDG is trying to track you. They explicitly claim they are not and would be in court fighting numerous charges right now if that was not the case. :)

Let us know if that makes any difference.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I've already dropped DDG from my search engine list.

ardouronerous
August 31st, 2017, 09:17 AM
276553
I blacked out my country, but as I said, DDG recorded my location.

276554
And this is Startpage. UK isn't even close to my location.

Bucky Ball
August 31st, 2017, 03:02 PM
I'm using this DDG homepage (https://start.duckduckgo.com/) and see nothing like your screenshots. The default page I see is the first screen shot below and the second is with my profile settings applied. Neither is anything like yours. Odd.

poorguy
August 31st, 2017, 04:05 PM
All websites collect information regardless of what they tell you.

No website respects end-user privacy.

vasa1
August 31st, 2017, 04:16 PM
All websites collect information regardless of what they tell you.

No website respects end-user privacy.

True dat.

ardouronerous
August 31st, 2017, 09:57 PM
I'm using this DDG homepage (https://start.duckduckgo.com/) and see nothing like your screenshots. The default page I see is the first screen shot below and the second is with my profile settings applied. Neither is anything like yours. Odd.

Very odd.
The DDG homepage that I use is this: https://duckduckgo.com/
(https://duckduckgo.com/)
Well, because of this confusion, I'm not going to use DDG.

poorguy
September 1st, 2017, 01:13 AM
Both look the same to me.

QIII
September 1st, 2017, 01:23 AM
I just assume someone will be watching me when I'm splashing around in the fishbowl. :)

ardouronerous
September 1st, 2017, 04:10 AM
All websites collect information regardless of what they tell you.

No website respects end-user privacy.

I trust Startpage.com because it has the endorsement of a certain whistleblower.


Both look the same to me.

Not really.

The DDG that Bucky Ball uses doesn't have any indication of region when you do a search.
While the DDG that I used and comes preinstalled with Firefox has indication of region when you do a search.

It looks like both are legit, but I'm confused by it, why two DDG homepages?

vasa1
September 1st, 2017, 04:25 AM
...
While the DDG that I used and comes preinstalled with Firefox has indication of region when you do a search.
...
I see that as well with Firefox 57. Instead of trying to figure out why, just use what Bucky uses :)

Firefox, though it goes on about privacy, may not be walking the talk.

ardouronerous
September 1st, 2017, 04:40 AM
But I'm a little suspicious of DuckDuckGo as a company though, as I said, if DDG cares about privacy and not tracking their users, then both DDG homepages should be the same, not using geolocation to track the region of their users.

And here's something to consider, if you do a search on Google or Startpage about DDG, https://duckduckgo.com comes out of the search, I've never found https://start.duckduckgo.com at all.

uxbal
September 1st, 2017, 11:56 AM
Send an email with your issue then do DDG. You've posted your concerns here, and nobody seems to know or care what your issue is.

For what it's worth, I use DDG for years now, and everytime I reset my browser, I have to manually add my region.

Use whichever you like.

Bucky Ball
September 1st, 2017, 05:03 PM
I'm using the beta version, but as I said, and gave a screen shot, neither version shows my location like yours and never has. Never used a version that shows my region. So, while you are confused about why my version(s) don't show region, I'm confused why yours does. Never seen it before.

ChuangTzu
September 1st, 2017, 10:19 PM
I would trust DDG more then startpage...last I heard startpage uses a proprietary system and most of their search results come from Google....at least DDG is open and pulls from various engines.

7dEfOk4AgU
September 4th, 2017, 05:51 AM
I use Duckduck go, I don't really know if the track or not. If they want to track my boring life good for them, the excitement must be riveting

mastablasta
September 4th, 2017, 11:01 AM
it's like going to a store with a large sign sayign i am from "enter_country_here" and then the store owner there owuld say hey you must be from "enter_country_here".

in other words IP is being automatically "advertised" upon connection, so it should not come as a surprise that someone is reading it. that is not an invasion of privacy if you willingly expose it.

even gathering such data is not an issue IMO, since people willingly gave it away. and isnce someone taking note of customers arriving to their premises is doing nothing wrong. for example teacher at nursery remembered my face and paired ti with my kid, so when she sees me comming she would tell him "daddy's here".

the problme becomes if they actively seak and want to get your other data to start pairign it with data they already have. for example if they would want to get in some way a name behind that IP, say form other services such as facebook. this owuld be against your wish and you did not willingly gave them that info. they bought it elsewhere and then paired it all.

vasa1
September 4th, 2017, 05:07 PM
Here's another one to throw into the mix: www.findx.com and their Privacy policy is here: https://www.privacore.com/privacy/privacy-promise/

vasa1
September 6th, 2017, 12:17 PM
OP, you may like to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkLQBpIGPKY

MasterNetra
September 7th, 2017, 06:36 AM
Not really a big deal your IP address can tell them your location (provided your not using a VPN or Tor. to which you should be using a VPN in general if you really care about your privacy that much), using the information you send to them to provide the right language and what have you isn't a big deal, they can use that information to your benefit and not actually save it. I see no problem here.

yoshii
September 7th, 2017, 04:30 PM
I use https://IXquick.eu and nothing else for web searches. I find it to be the best, much better than Google and Bing and everything else. I don't use StartPage because it's partially correlated to some Google services.

If you use Mozilla web browsers, the browswer itself is exchanging some info with Google for "geo" locating. Do about:config (in address bar) and search for "geo" and you'll see some variables with http links to other places. A few variables can be safely edited and replaced with blanks, but some of them are for security purposes (filtering out bad sites) so you might not want to do that. Other boolean variables such as
geo.enabled can be safely set to "false". I think that's the main setting you'll want. Other than that, webpage scripts and referrers and other codestuff can determine where you are from the server info. It's getting harder and harder to be anonymous on the net. If you have FireFox though, you can still add a lot of privacy extensions until version 55 when a lot of support will drop.

mastablasta
September 8th, 2017, 06:42 AM
I find it to be the best, much better than Google and Bing and everything else.
it doesn't find my wife's website no matter what keywords i use. google, bing et all would all find it and put it at least on front page if not among top 3.

Wadim_Korneev
September 16th, 2017, 09:43 AM
Firefox, though it goes on about privacy, may not be walking the talk.