A stereotypical internet user is unaware of the information they give away to data-hungry leeches. These leeches buy, sell, trade and store these data. Great companies like Google and Facebook claim to be safe when they, themselves, manipulate our data and info to suit their needs.
Just by playing a game on Facebook, we are giving away so many of our details. You can not even imagine the extent! The data we consent to give away is just the tip of the answer. If you look inside, you will discover the depth of information leaking and that it is not in our control. We can not close the tap.
In this day and age, online privacy is an important concern. Apple is working to come up with a new way to stop third party(Amazon or any other sites)sites or apps from getting and storing our information. They are going to add a ‘sign in with Apple’ button, which will be authenticated with FaceID and not by revealing any personal information.
DuckDuckGo abbreviated as DDG is an internet search engine. It is known for protecting searcher’s privacy, avoiding the filter bubble of personalised search results and not profiling its users. Its name has been derived from the game duck, duck, goose. A children’s game in which a student runs behind other a circle of other student and chooses one of them. This chosen one has to run behind the one who chose them until the latter gets caught or settles back in the circle.
It was discovered by Gabriel Weinberg in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania on Feb 29, 2008.
DuckDuckGo’s results are compiled from over four hundred sources. These sources include Yahoo!, Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckBot (its web crawler) and Wikipedia, among others. It does not, however, include content mill websites like eHow, which the owner says is low in quality and designed to rank high in Google’s search index. It also ignores sites with too many advertisements.
It does not store IP addresses, user information and cookie until it has to. That being said, they do maintain logs of all the search terms used. With Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, etc. tracking everything you do, selling information about you, etc., that is saying a lot.
Another advantage of having DuckDuckGo is that shows only relevant results (called Instant Answers in DuckDuckGo lingo or zero-click info) on top of the search page.
It also introduced anonymous searching using the Tor network and enabled access through onion service. It allowed anonymity by routing traffic through encrypted relays. Using Tor and DDG, the use can be anonymous with their search. If using the encrypted homepage, the user can be an end to end encrypted, too. DDG does not store IP addresses, cookies or use any of those google related services.
DuckDuckGo also comes with voice search
Using! Bang keywords, the user can search on specific third-party websites using the site’s search engine. It is a shortcut to other search engines like Amazon, IMDB, etc.
DuckDuckGo is open about how it earns revenue. It makes money by serving ads from Yahoo and Bing search alliance network and through affiliation with websites like Amazon and eBay.
It is built upon search APIs and hence is known as a hybrid search engine.
DuckDuckGo in feels like days of early Google. It offers the essential results only rather than click bait, advertisements and traps. It is meaty, straightforward and filler free. Something every user searches for these days.
In 2011, it was featured in Time’s list of 50 Best Websites. Google even acknowledged it as a competitor. As of June 2019, DuckDuckGo has hit 1 billion searches per month.
With Google knowing about you more than you, yourself, know, you might consider getting DuckDuckGo. Google knows everything about you through your search from your favourite colour to the type of disease you recently though you might have. It stores the information. No, not even incognito mode is safe mode. Google can quickly be dubbed as a spy on your shoulder.
According to Google, search relevancy is self-centred. One may argue that these personally tailored networks, as well as filters, are just coded words for their more useful function as an ad platform.
On the other hand, DDG takes the opposite road. One which leads to discovering parts of the web that may not be tailed to correctly our needs but still is deemed relevant to our search query. It is providing mentality independent search — an antagonist to Google’s mission, vision and core values.
Last year(2018), DuckDuckGo launched a fully revamped version of their browser extension and mobile application. These now have an inbuilt tracker blocking tools, smart encryption, websites with privacy grading and anon search.
You can log on to the DuckDuckGo website and do your search or make the turn into into a default search engine. You can also download the DuckDuckGo extension (Privacy Essential) which is available for both firefox and google chrome. There is even an app (DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser) on play store by the name of DuckDuckGo.
Or you can click on the three dots by the header. Go to setting. Then search for ‘edit search engine’ in the drop-down menu. Find the DuckDuckGo option and make it default.
So what do these third parties do with your information?
Most websites internet user visits have hidden trackers. These stalk you, collect your personal information and stores it. You are then overwhelmed by ads. Based upon your browsing history(you thought you deleted it, think again), they make a profile of yours. This profile is sold to the highest bidder.
DuckDuckGo will step in before the process could even reach its commencement. It whoever you block the hidden tracker, expose the network tracking you and now you can track the one track you.
Encryption is essential since it protects yours from people who are watching and listening to you without your awareness. DuckDuckGo can send you an encrypted version o the website automatically. Thus, it further protects you.
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