What are you thoughts on this? It "grades" the page you are on for privacy. With tracker blocking.
New Update DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
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Tutman
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Some more info. I tested the exntesion and it seems good. Their PP says:
It's not a bad PP. However, it does save your sites and can share that with some companies, including any products you buy. They say it's annonymized. It's your choice to believe in them. I never heard about any audit in duckduckgo before. On the goode side: they are one of the biggest private serach engines on the web (if not the biggest). They are also active since 2008. However, having servers on US is never a good thing. Personally, i would not use an extension to enhance privacy from a company with their owners background, and based in US.
Furthermore:
a) you can block trackers with Firefox/Edge/Brave antitracker builtin options, and/or use ublock origin or adguard and privacy badger (from eff).
b) https everywhere already forces encryptions and it's from EFF. A nonprofit organization that fights for privacy online.
c) there are some extension that already classify sites. I would recommend Terms Of Service; didn't read. It's open source and funded by non profit organizations.
When you search at DuckDuckGo, we don't know who you are and there is no way to tie your searches together.
When you access DuckDuckGo (or any Web site), your Web browser automatically sends information about your computer, e.g. your User agent and IP address.
Because this information could be used to link you to your searches, we do not log (store) it at all. This is a very unusual practice, but we feel it is an important step to protect your privacy.
It is unusual for a few reasons. First, most server software auto-stores this information, so you have to go out of your way not to store it. Second, most businesses want to keep as much information as possible because they don't know when it will be useful. Third, many search engines actively use this information, for example to show you more targeted advertising.
Another way that your searches are often tied together at other search engines are through browser cookies, which are pieces of information that sit on your computer and get sent to the search engine on each request. What search engines often do is store a unique identifier in your browser and then associate that identifier with your searches. At DuckDuckGo, no cookies are used by default.
In response to efforts by the EFF and others, the major search engines have begun "anonymizing" their search log data after periods of time. Sure, this is better than not doing so, but you should note that this does not make your search history anonymous in the same way that it is at DuckDuckGo.
What search engines generally do when they anonymize data is get rid of part of your IP address or turn it into something that doesn't look exactly like an IP address. And they do the same thing for uniquely identifying cookies.
However, in many cases, this so-called anonymous data can still tie your searches together, which can be used to reconstruct who you are and what you searched for. Additionally, search engines usually are silent on what they do with the User agent, which has been shown to also have enough information to often be personally identifiable, especially if isolated to a particular search session (day).
Information Collected
At DuckDuckGo, no cookies are used by default. If you have changed any settings, then cookies are used to store those changes. However, in that case, they are not stored in a personally identifiable way. For example, the large size setting is stored as 's=l'; no unique identifier is in there. Furthermore, if you prefer not to use cookies to store settings, you can use URL parameters instead.
Additionally, if you use our !bang syntax/dropdown, which bangs you use are stored in a cookie so that we can list your most frequently used ones on top of the !bang dropdown box. Just like the other settings, this information is not saved on our servers at all, but resides solely on your computer. There is also a setting to turn this off, which you can also set via a URL parameter. Particular searches are of course not stored. An example cookie might look like: php=2&yelp=19&java=4.
We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings. We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings.
Similarly, we may add an affiliate code to some eCommerce sites (e.g. Amazon & eBay) that results in small commissions being paid back to DuckDuckGo when you make purchases at those sites. We do not use any third parties to do the code insertion, and we do not work with any sites that share personally identifiable information (e.g. name, address, etc.) via their affiliate programs. This means that no information is shared from DuckDuckGo to the sites, and the only information that is collected from this process is product information, which is not tied to any particular user and which we do not save or store on our end. It is completely analogous to the search result case from the previous paragraph--we can see anonymous product info such that we cannot tie them to any particular person (or even tie multiple purchases together). This whole affiliate process is an attempt to keep advertising to a minimal level on DuckDuckGo.
Finally, if you give us feedback, it may be stored in our email. However, you can give anonymous feedback (by not entering your email or other personal info on the feedback form).
Information Shared
If you turn redirects off in the settings and you don't either turn POST on or use our encrypted site, then your search could leak to sites you click on. Yet as explained above, this does not happen by default.
Also, like anyone else, we will comply with court ordered legal requests. However, in our case, we don't expect any because there is nothing useful to give them since we don't collect any personal information.
source
When you access DuckDuckGo (or any Web site), your Web browser automatically sends information about your computer, e.g. your User agent and IP address.
Because this information could be used to link you to your searches, we do not log (store) it at all. This is a very unusual practice, but we feel it is an important step to protect your privacy.
It is unusual for a few reasons. First, most server software auto-stores this information, so you have to go out of your way not to store it. Second, most businesses want to keep as much information as possible because they don't know when it will be useful. Third, many search engines actively use this information, for example to show you more targeted advertising.
Another way that your searches are often tied together at other search engines are through browser cookies, which are pieces of information that sit on your computer and get sent to the search engine on each request. What search engines often do is store a unique identifier in your browser and then associate that identifier with your searches. At DuckDuckGo, no cookies are used by default.
In response to efforts by the EFF and others, the major search engines have begun "anonymizing" their search log data after periods of time. Sure, this is better than not doing so, but you should note that this does not make your search history anonymous in the same way that it is at DuckDuckGo.
What search engines generally do when they anonymize data is get rid of part of your IP address or turn it into something that doesn't look exactly like an IP address. And they do the same thing for uniquely identifying cookies.
However, in many cases, this so-called anonymous data can still tie your searches together, which can be used to reconstruct who you are and what you searched for. Additionally, search engines usually are silent on what they do with the User agent, which has been shown to also have enough information to often be personally identifiable, especially if isolated to a particular search session (day).
Information Collected
At DuckDuckGo, no cookies are used by default. If you have changed any settings, then cookies are used to store those changes. However, in that case, they are not stored in a personally identifiable way. For example, the large size setting is stored as 's=l'; no unique identifier is in there. Furthermore, if you prefer not to use cookies to store settings, you can use URL parameters instead.
Additionally, if you use our !bang syntax/dropdown, which bangs you use are stored in a cookie so that we can list your most frequently used ones on top of the !bang dropdown box. Just like the other settings, this information is not saved on our servers at all, but resides solely on your computer. There is also a setting to turn this off, which you can also set via a URL parameter. Particular searches are of course not stored. An example cookie might look like: php=2&yelp=19&java=4.
We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings. We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings.
Similarly, we may add an affiliate code to some eCommerce sites (e.g. Amazon & eBay) that results in small commissions being paid back to DuckDuckGo when you make purchases at those sites. We do not use any third parties to do the code insertion, and we do not work with any sites that share personally identifiable information (e.g. name, address, etc.) via their affiliate programs. This means that no information is shared from DuckDuckGo to the sites, and the only information that is collected from this process is product information, which is not tied to any particular user and which we do not save or store on our end. It is completely analogous to the search result case from the previous paragraph--we can see anonymous product info such that we cannot tie them to any particular person (or even tie multiple purchases together). This whole affiliate process is an attempt to keep advertising to a minimal level on DuckDuckGo.
Finally, if you give us feedback, it may be stored in our email. However, you can give anonymous feedback (by not entering your email or other personal info on the feedback form).
Information Shared
If you turn redirects off in the settings and you don't either turn POST on or use our encrypted site, then your search could leak to sites you click on. Yet as explained above, this does not happen by default.
Also, like anyone else, we will comply with court ordered legal requests. However, in our case, we don't expect any because there is nothing useful to give them since we don't collect any personal information.
source
It's not a bad PP. However, it does save your sites and can share that with some companies, including any products you buy. They say it's annonymized. It's your choice to believe in them. I never heard about any audit in duckduckgo before. On the goode side: they are one of the biggest private serach engines on the web (if not the biggest). They are also active since 2008. However, having servers on US is never a good thing. Personally, i would not use an extension to enhance privacy from a company with their owners background, and based in US.
Furthermore:
a) you can block trackers with Firefox/Edge/Brave antitracker builtin options, and/or use ublock origin or adguard and privacy badger (from eff).
b) https everywhere already forces encryptions and it's from EFF. A nonprofit organization that fights for privacy online.
c) there are some extension that already classify sites. I would recommend Terms Of Service; didn't read. It's open source and funded by non profit organizations.
So they piggyback off you to make money on Amazon and Ebay?! I don't like that part! (Will just stick with Adguard.) Thanks much for the research!
I'd replace AdGuard and HTTPS Everywhere with Privacy Essentials if it offered a way to block EU cookie warnings.
Privacy Essentials offers a far more comprehensive form of forced encryption than HTTPS Everywhere, as seen here:
ToS;DR powers Privacy Essentials grading system:
Privacy Essentials offers a far more comprehensive form of forced encryption than HTTPS Everywhere, as seen here:
Interesting, but it seems a little exaggerated... Https everywhere is a very solid extension with years of development. It's hard to believe that the difference would be so big. The comparison you posted was made by duckduckgo? If so, i would not rely on that so much.
I didn't realize that. Good to know! It's a good step from both groups
The difference is due to DDG using a web crawler (possibly the same one used to index web pages for their search engine) to automatically generate their Smarter Encryption list, while HTTPS Everywhere relies on a mix of crowd-sourcing and EFF hand-maintaining it.
F
ForgottenSeer 85179
No need to break websites. Just config cookie setting for sites once and you're done.
But if you reply want, just use a anti-cookie filterlist in AdGuard.
Also for HTTPS: all important sites use https nowadays. And mainstream browser display warning for http sites
I have my browser set to clear cookies on exit, so the warnings return every new browsing session.
I already do. I just wish Privacy Essentials gave a way to do so so I could replace my current extensions with it.
Yeah, but a lot use HSTS to force encryption which is just gross.
F
ForgottenSeer 85179
So why do this then? Also you can set exceptions for sites which don't get cleared
Why not? Not like there's any reason to have all these sites' cookies floating around in my browser.
I already do this for sites I want to stay logged in on.
@Arequire , are you using the browser options to delete cookies on exit? If so, how do you add exceptions?
F
ForgottenSeer 85179
In Edge you can control that on cookie management
I am. How you add exclusions varies depending on the browser, but for most Chromium-based browsers you can do so by opening Settings ➜ Site settings ➜ Cookies and site data, then add the domain(s) under the Allow section like so:
To do so on Firefox, you go Options ➜ Privacy & Security ➜ Cookies and Site Data ➜ Manage Permissions, then add the domain(s) to the list and click Allow for each. (Can't provide a screenshot for this as I have Firefox set to not allow cookies to be saved.)
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DuckDuckGo Extension blocks Google FLoC in latest update
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DuckDuckGo Extension blocks Google FLoC in latest update - gHacks Tech News
The latest version of DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, a browser extension for Chrome and other browsers, blocks FLoC, a new group-based identification system for advertising.
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