A member in SciFi's Politics and News group, Eliza DoLots, mentioned that she likes and uses DuckDuckGo regularly ~ not collecting any personal data seems like a solid reason to switch ~ I'm curious if anyone here uses or has tried DuckDuckGo and I'm especially interested in Jab's take on it ~ there are some "live links" to more info in the original ~ Sooz

Wednesday, Jun 19, 2013 11:30 AM CDT
Popularity boost for search engines outside NSA dragnets
DuckDuckGo, among others, is benefiting from never tracking user data in the first place VIDEO
By Natasha Lennard


Small-player search engine DuckDuckGo has a very simple method for resisting handing over vast swaths of user information to the government — it doesn’t collect the data in the first place. Unsurprisingly, the PRISM-evading search engine has thus seen an uptick in popularity since it was revealed that the National Security Administration has been hoarding data on our online communications via Google, Yahoo and Bing, among others. The Guardian noted that DuckDuckGo, “which promises not to send users’ searches to other sites or store any personal information, generated just under 3.1m direct queries on Monday (17 June), compared to its daily average of 1.8m direct queries in the month of May.”

When Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo, gave a presentation at the Gel 2013 conference in April, he couldn’t have foreseen the bombshell news revelations about the vast extent to which the government was surveilling and hoarding communications data. What he did make clear, though, was just how prevalent the collection of such data was already by tech giants like Google; the ability to pass on such personally identifiable data is intrinsic to Google’s financial model. Weinberg pointed out that these online giants are designed in such a way as to track you (that’s how they monetize through targeted advertising) — but this has led to an increasing demand, via court orders, from law enforcement and government agencies for this already tracked online data.

“By not storing any useful information, DuckDuckGo simply isn’t useful to these surveillance programs,” chief executive Weinberg told Silicon Angle last week. “We literally do not store personally identifiable user data, so if the NSA were to get a hold of all our data, it would not be useful to them since it is all truly anonymous.”

Other search engines, such as StartPage and Yacy, also avoid NSA dragnets by never storing search activity. As the Guardian noted, however an engine like DuckDuckGo “isn’t going to knock the big search-engine guns off their perches in the immediate future but its slogan: Google tracks you. We don’t – as famously emblazoned on a San Francisco billboard ad – appears to be striking a chord with more internet users.”

Watch DuckDuckGo’s Weinberg’s April speech, in which he explains how search engines like Google are built to track personally identifiable data, and thus were always in a place to help the government do the same: [Sooz says video accessible via the end link]

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/popularity_boost_for_search_engines_outside_nsa_dragnets/

I switched over to DuckDuckGo at the beginning of the year. I'm happy with it.

i am done with this shit. i can't stand getting spied on. anyone-other-than-Google-it-is.

I posted a version of my op on the Tech Discussion board in Andrew's OurBoard Support group at Search engines not in NSA targets ~ his comments add important background info and perspective ~ bottom line for me: we don't live in a perfect world and there's no perfect answer ~

Sooz

I sort of feel the way the one person in there does. It's more like Bing, which I hate! It's ok, but nothing like Google, who has had years to perfect their search engine. Spy on me all you want, I guess.

I'll use DDG if I want to search "bomb making" or something similar. (actually even using that term here makes me want to look over my shoulder............. )

They obviously aren't very good at the spying thing, or they would've caught all of these idiots who's computers revealed, AFTER THE FACT, that they did such searches. Think about it.