DuckDuckGo's new privacy policy tried to explain why you should care

by kn0thing • 16 years ago

86 49 16 years ago

kn0thing2• 16 years ago

There are clearly a lot of DDG fans here on HackerNews, but it hasn't yet broken out into the mainstream. That said, providing a great search engine (I took the DDG Challenge -- tried it as my default search for a week -- and I'm still using it months later) is step one.

Beyond that, explaining things like this in plain English for people who don't normally think about things like search privacy are doing a great service for DDG.

city412• 16 years ago

Yes but my anecdotal evidence suggests average people really don't care at all. It seems like only technically oriented people concern themselves with privacy issues.

levesque2• 16 years ago

Well maybe it is our responsibility to awaken the average Joe to the possible dangers of information collection and privacy breaches?

ugh• 16 years ago

It is my impression that they do care but they don’t know what to do about it. They are overwhelmed.

Many see the news reports about Google and Facebook and are genuinely concerned yet unable to understand the technical details that would allow them to make informed decisions about what to do. They feel discomfort and would be very happy if you explained to them in plain native_language what happens and why.

I wouldn’t expect very many people to be all that concerned if you told them what kind of data Google collects – but they would be more than happy to get rid of the discomfort.

axod3• 16 years ago

I don't think it's true that only technical people concern themselves with these things. Only a small but overly vocal subset of technical people do...

I'm technical, and I couldn't care less about search security/privacy.

The page screams out to me "solving a problem that doesn't exist". Why do I care that Amazon knows that I searched google for "shoes"??? Surely that's useful info to pass on to Amazon. In what instance would I care? I can't think of any...

The way a startup will win against Google is by doing what Google did 10 years ago. Give users better, clearer, faster, more streamlined results.

Whilst Google is chasing silliness like 'real time update results' - WTF do I care what people are saying on twitter? - a startup can stick to what people actually want - clean search results.

Pandering to an extremely small niche of privacy freakouts, I don't think is a scalable strategy.

(just my 2c)

afhof• 16 years ago

After trying to convince a friend that privacy is important, I got the usual retort: "It doesn't really matter to me if some company picks up on these things".

I wouldn't be surprised if others did start caring if the the negative side effects were brought up more thoroughly. After reading DDG's policy, I can't really point to where the negative side effects are. They aren't clearly spelled out and easily visible. I don't have much in the way of penmanship, but I'm sure that talent lies in the the readers of this website. Someone should clear up the cloudy negative effects of giving away their whole life to some company.

Side note: "Don't be evil" sounds just like the slogan of an evil company. :)

amichail2• 16 years ago

The main page doesn't state why you should use the search engine over Google. If there are two or three compelling reasons, then they should be mentioned there.

epi0Bauqu7• 16 years ago

The current about page (http://duckduckgo.com/about.html) is dedicated to answering that question. Are you saying you think I should add a summary sentence on the homepage? I just haven't because I don't want to introduce clutter.

someone_here• 16 years ago

No, it's fine.

city412• 16 years ago

Maybe something really simple that might attract the curious? "A better search engine, learn why"

amichail2• 16 years ago

Yes, I think a summary sentence is essential.

Perhaps also provide sample query links to side-by-side comparisons with Google.

mtigas2• 16 years ago

I think it’s acceptable as-is, but I can’t help but notice that Ixquick (https://ixquick.com/) very directly markets what differentiates itself from other search engines (re: privacy).

Summary sentence wouldn’t be bad, a la Google’s homepage.

quizbiz• 16 years ago

you need three more words on the homepage linking to that about page: "Why We're Better"

Herald_MJ• 16 years ago

A reddit founder posting on Hacker News? Controversial.

kn0thing2• 16 years ago

Eh? This reddit co-founder <3s Hacker news. I lurk here as much as I read reddit.

rayvega• 16 years ago

No controversy: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2007/sb20070...

mburney2• 16 years ago

I know a lot of people that would use DDG if they actually read this page, but I think the problem is that most of them won't find it or read it. They are not hackers and they don't read blogs or meta/about pages of sites.

epi0Bauqu7• 16 years ago

Any ideas for how to reach them? Somehow incent people like you to spread it to them?

mburney2• 16 years ago

From a psychological point of view I think they could be reached by ads which emphasize the DDG vs. Google privacy issues, but something brief such that they wouldn't need to spend more than a minute reading it.

I already do recommend DDG to people, especially those who I know that care about privacy a lot.

blahedo• 16 years ago

Link to it on facebook. If they see you as a reliable authority on tech things, they will take your suggestions seriously, and in some cases share them. I've had more than a couple links go mini-viral after I posted them.

clintavo• 16 years ago

That's a difficult one - we can see how hard Yahoo and Bing have tried against Google - it's hard to get mainstream users to change - maybe if DDG could be positioned to drive site search for some more mainstream sites so that when people searched they would see the DDG branding especially with a "web search" option in the site search results. There might be some wiggle room to move into the territory Yahoo BOSS was targeting now that it seems like that project is abandoned after the Bing deal.

ars• 16 years ago

Today is my first time trying it out (although I've heard of it before), but I feel a little tricked with the image, map, and news searches. They are google links, but don't use the google logos.

Some people will use DDG specifically for the privacy, and those links will forward the search query without asking any questions.

At least use the standard logos, or say google. Or proxy the search (not sure if that's practical).

If it's simply a better search then fine, but if the draw is the privacy then you need to be much more strict about the external searches.

epi0Bauqu7• 16 years ago

Thx--those are new, and I'll probably go with something else as the default as well as let you choose which provider you want in the settings. Any ideas for the best default?

joeyh• 16 years ago

FWIW, I also dislike that those don't point out they're using google.

shasta• 16 years ago

Is there a shorter URL variant than "duckduckgo.com"?

rtp• 16 years ago

http://dukgo.com

natep• 16 years ago

even better, just type dukgo.com/(search terms, no parens needed) and it takes you straight to the search page you want. So far it hasn't failed, no matter what punctuation I've used (Chrome)

cdawzrd• 16 years ago

If you are using Firefox, you can modify the variable keyword.URL in about:config to point to DDG instead of Google. This also enables "bang syntax" in the firefox address bar.

For example, I can type "!cpp string::length" into the address box and be taken right to the reference page(s)

levesque2• 16 years ago

This convinced me to give DuckDuckGo a try.

I can't say I love the design though. I'd prefer a more professional look.

epi0Bauqu7• 16 years ago

Thx. I've toyed with having themes, and a "more professional" look would certainly be among them. If anyone wants to take a stab at one, let me know.

orblivion• 16 years ago

I like this professional theme you already have:

http://duckduckgo.com/?v=c&q=professional

cubicle67• 16 years ago

nah, I like it.

heard someone once saying things people experience are like a piece of string that passes between their ears and is gone. You need to make sure you provide a knot in the string so it doesn't slip through so easily, and the person remembers it. The cartoon duck and the name are that knot.

akshat2• 16 years ago

I wonder how they are ensuring that the searches I do are completely anonymized.

I understand that that they do not store IP address/cookie/etc, but often by just looking at as little as a few searches you can zero down on the person in question. For example I have often searched for:

Citrix Blogvault

I am possibly the only person who will be searching for both those things.

mtigas2• 16 years ago

If only the search itself is stored, without any separate and possibly-identifying information (IP, sesssion, time), then it doesn’t matter if you are the only one that searches for these things.

By their account, if you search something (A) and then you search something else (B), there is no way to link A and B. They are two separate searches and they could have been performed by separate users.

Granted, given a ton of disparate searches, you could theoretically group searches by possible users — or at the very least, by similar users — by statistical means.

(Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, while they mention timestamps in terms of other search engines, they do not mention their own policy regarding them. Timestamps are not directly “identifying information” but they still significantly boost the likelihood that a specific user is performing a given set of searches.)

akshat2• 16 years ago

Actually now thinking about it, hopefully if they are not storing IP(or cookie etc)at any point of time, even temporarily, two searches will not show relationship with each other.

But I can imagine the benefits of keeping track of all searches done by one user. It can definitely be used to improve the search engine itself.

Legion• 16 years ago

I have now done the same search query.

Get a bunch of other people on board, and you'll have crowdsourced your privacy. :)

wildmXranat• 16 years ago

Question: Does anonymizing/cleaning of the searches break a site owners analytics report, where it doesn't show which keywords drive traffic to the site ?

epi0Bauqu7• 16 years ago

Yes it does.

Encosia• 16 years ago

I wish there were a balance between privacy and providing site owners with some sort of analytics. Correlating search terms to destinations on my site is something that I find very valuable.

For example, I recently noticed that searches for "invalid JSON primitive" were bringing users to a page on my site where that error was briefly discussed a few places within its over 200 comments, but no where within the body of the post. I think people may have eventually been finding their answers by searching on the page, but I can't imagine that it was a very good experience.

So, I wrote a new post that directly addresses that error in more detail, and now that newer post is ranking for the query instead of the older one. A win for everyone involved.

If I had been unable to see what search terms were bringing people to my site, I couldn't have done that.

BobbyH• 16 years ago

Gabriel, have you thought about linking your privacy policy from the front page of your site?

On a broader note, have you thought about focusing your branding on the "we are insanely private" aspect? You could add "the world's most private search engine" to your Title tag. I just looked it up and saw this search engine uses that angle: http://ixquick.com/

epi0Bauqu7• 16 years ago

Thx. I have thought about it, but just don't want to clutter the homepage. It is on the about page, though. In any case, I will reconsider this.

pbhjpbhj• 16 years ago

Why not simply create another front-end that's seriously branded and with a secure sounding name?

If you're about it too you could create a serious but not privacy-targeted front-end too and do some A-B testing on take up, retention, et cetera.

u48998• 16 years ago

Duck Duck Go should seriously consider adopting a serious sounding name.

icey• 16 years ago

Yeah, something with gravitas like Yahoo! or Bing, right?

DuckDuckGo's new privacy policy tried to explain why you should care

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