Is DuckDuckGo a good search engine?

[Kumann]

https://www.ecosia.org is supposedly trustworthy. It's a fork of FF without the **** in it.

[Snowhog]

There is no such thing as a 'free lunch'. Everything comes at some cost; everything.

[Arcadia]

That's spooky! I wasn't aware that they partnered with Yahoo etc who supported invasive internet surveillance bills. I personally use Bing for the rewards points but I'm sure it has its own share of problems with invasiveness and data selling.

[vivexigame]

An interesting article raising some interestng questions:

I wasn't aware of the history of the DDG creator.

I personally use google search engine, and I also things that no other search engine is good as google.

[GreyGeek]

I find you can't trust any search engine with your personal data. They make their income from mining info to be sold to advertisers or others. I just use the one that seems to work for me.
DDG most of the time But have used start page also. I just assume none of them is out for my privacy. And any privacy i may have on the WWW i'll have to take care of myself.
VPN's help but are not a total answer either. If the Gov. or others want your info there are just too many sources to get it from. Other than moving to were there is no grid no internet and still they have ways.

I agree

[jglen490]

DDG, as a search facility, is probably as good/bad as any other. None of them are worth unmitigated trust.

Watch your clicks, they are yours, and the consequences are yours - good or bad!

[oshunluvr]

I started using "Mojeek" as a result of this conversation. Has it's own web crawler, but when it fails to find results you searched for, offers you to use another search engine. I'm going to stick with it for awhile and see how it goes.

I also have been using Brave browser, but trying out Vivaldi again. It has a lot of features built-in and it's own email server, which is nice if you don't want gmail.

[kc1di]

I find you can't trust any search engine with your personal data. They make their income from mining info to be sold to advertisers or others. I just use the one that seems to work for me.
DDG most of the time But have used start page also. I just assume none of them is out for my privacy. And any privacy i may have on the WWW i'll have to take care of myself.
VPN's help but are not a total answer either. If the Gov. or others want your info there are just too many sources to get it from. Other than moving to were there is no grid no internet and still they have ways.

[jglen490]

Search engines are complex and require a LOT of support and maintenance. So, why does that matter? They are free to use. No one (generally) pays for a search engine. So, they generate income by selling user info, usually metadata.

Of course, if enough metadata is available, actual data is not required.

The ONLY thing a user can do, IMNSHO, is watch what you click. Be a healthy skeptic. Live with it, or unplug.

[Qqmike]

🤣 🤣 🤣 I need 7 more characters. Maybe I can recruit some of the characters here at KFN!?

[claydoh]

Search engine aggregators are another option that can be useful. SearX is one example
On any search engine, using even the most basic operators will vastly increase decent results, or at least filter out the junk and keyword spam.

[GreyGeek]

My opinion: They all suck, but not as bad has google does now. You simply can't get meaningful results from google because they've so overloaded it with advertisement algorithms you can't get to your desired results. I'm waiting for a browser plug-in that actually hides the ad results rather than just blocking the links.

And, over that last five or six years, Google has been sorting and filtering our search results to limit what we can access and present political links we'd never visit. Pure censorship.

That said, I believe that it is essentially impossible to prevent Google and its ilk from collecting out personal data, even if we use a VPN or Tor. Single pixel bots, hardware signature analysis, AI and more working on their 100K+ servers, too many to block with a host file, make keeping our personal info private essentially impossible. All I protect against now is hackers, but my system isn't worth their time because everyone and his brother probably has my personal info and they wouldn't be able to add my machine to their bot farm or make it one of their command and control systems. Why bother? There are too many lowing hanging Windows boxes out there to bother with my Linux box.

[Snowhog]

[Snowhog retreats to the shadows; updates dossier on Qqmike.]

[Qqmike]

Not a search expert here. But I agree with jglen: watch your clicker!

jglen: In my opinion, the biggest threat to each of us is not paying attention to what we click on. Browsers, email, etc., it's all the same.

As for Google, yeah. But so what. If you have something to hide, then you darn well better hide it -- stay off the Net or know how to use it on the sly. As for privacy, what is that? As for Google's part in it, are you aware that you can go into your Google account and manage, control, delete almost everything? Besides, I have an ace in the hole. If ever asked about something personal I left on the Internet somewhere, well, as kids we would say something like, "I did that to fool the enemy when he flies over." Now and then, add a little garbage to your clicking!

Questions?

[oshunluvr]

My opinion: They all suck, but not as bad has google does now. You simply can't get meaningful results from google because they've so overloaded it with advertisement algorithms you can't get to your desired results. I'm waiting for a browser plug-in that actually hides the ad results rather than just blocking the links.