Brave roasts DuckDuckGo over Bing privacy exception Brave CEO Brendan Eich took aim at rival DuckDuckGo on Wednesday by challenging the web search engine's efforts to brush off revelations that its Android, iOS, and macOS browsers gave, to a degree, Microsoft Bing and LinkedIn trackers a pass versus other trackers. Eich drew attention to one of DuckDuckGo's defenses for …
If I see just how much data is shipped to Microsoft from all corners of the planet I find it incredible that they have not been on the receiving end of a privacy lawsuit, and that's just for what is exported from Windows.
Time to finish my book, I think, I doscovered some more fun facts about what they're up to - the controversy alone will be entertaining :)
Can't blame a dog for barking. Nobody expects Microsoft to respect your privacy.
However, when a new and hip company springs up saying they're different and don't track you.. Well, expectations were different. I'm sure many weren't entirely naïve, but false advertising is false advertising.
So Brendan Eich may be unfair with DuckDuckGo, but nonetheless the latter didn't claim out loud that it was allowing MS to track users. On the contrary, DDG did a lot to let us believe its browser was safe on a privacy point of view. This is misleading and disappointing.
The biggest problem in search is that the better it is (Google), the less trustworthy it is.
There are some open projects with their own crawlers that don't blend search results (mojeek, amongst others), which may not always yield the results you want, but luckily most of them make it easy to search using another engine in that case.
There are several that allow 'anonymous' Google (startpage, amongst others) or Bing (swisscows, amongst others) results, and there are also some that blend results.
Brave has their own crawler, and optionally blends search results as far as I understand, similarly to Qwant.
Try a few of them and see what you like best.
Misleading an disappointing? Try Brave and their "Brave Rewards" which is a proxy for companies to contribute without publicly being identified (obviously Binance, but now Google it appears).
It's clear that DuckDuckGo (DDG) is picking up in popularity and I guess these are preliminary shots similar to how Microsoft funded SCO during SCO Vs. IBM... Unix for Windows my ass.
The tracking DDG allows is the least offensive on the net and if you still don't like that, close your browser.
My guess is he's implying that the ads are not targeted to the user, but rather related to the search results, as opposed to storing a bunch of information about the user's past search results and clicked links (and in the case of Google, all that juicy analytics data they have cross-site) to target ads.
I haven't read the ToS though, but that, in my mind, would be the logical difference.
They do this to get paid.
Ad companies don't pay out if you tell them "We showed 1000 ads and got 10 clicks"
You have to prove you got the clicks to get paid.
I'm not saying this is ethical, but that's how this business works.
Yeah well M$ needs all the help it can get to get onto your machine. I reckon half the users are the ones that can't be arsed changing the edge settings that seem to put bing search on every edge page they can, and reckon that almost all of those searches are good google.
Tracking and targeted advertising just needs to die, or more accurately get taken out behind the shed and brutally beaten to death. IMHO it doesn't actually serve anyone but the ad-slingers.
The fact that several big companies now serve third party cookies through their own domains means that under GDPR rules they now become the data processors and can be held liable for use and misuse of the data passing through their domain. Someone with the means just needs to find a pressure point and push them on it. Could very well unravel the whole thing.
Whilst I totally agree with you the trouble is there is so much money to be made in this area it is going to be very difficult. Just look at Google.
What pisses me off even more is the sites that split the standard cookies and "legitimate interest" and you see a default option of blank that actually means "assumed consent". You then have to do "Object All" (assuming the button is there) to block them. The list of these so-called legitimate interest is often running to hundreds or entries.
The list of cookies is often shorter as they have clearly moved as much as possible into the legitimate interest field.
Targeted content of any kind need to die! It's allays been the pipe dream of manipulating little shits that think they can predict human needs with what mostly amounts to keyword matches.
Discovery is an extremely important part of life, and the algo-driven dystopian desert that most people experience online runs contrary to that.
I think that's going a bit far but I do broadly agree. Most advertisers seem to believe the targeted ads are better lie* and it's the data companies (Google, Facebook) that make all the money.
* Actually targeting based on _historic_ data rather than current context is what's wrong - clearly ads on the Reg will be more technically focused and search term ads are important.
"IMHO it doesn't actually serve anyone but the ad-slingers."
Who else do you imagine ADs are supposed to serve? They're ads, their point isn't to make your life better or behave in an egalitarian manner, their point is to make businesses money and nothing more.
Targetted ads push passive ads to the kinds of people that are most suspectible to conversion with the sole purpose of parting fools from their money. It's that simple, no one is pretending it's anything else. Everything that happens in the world doesn't have to benefit you mate.
The fact that the DuckDuckgo browser appears not be be blocking ads by default, means there was always going to be privacy concerns in the browser. But i guess its still better than just using Google and Chrome in its default settings.
Personally im going to stick with Firefox with Ublock origin and the strict tracking protection turned on. Although i did need to temporarily switch back to standard tracker protection this morning to be able to complete a purchase on Aliexpress which had been working without issue up until i updated to FF 101
I used Brave (on mac) for 2 years without crashes.
But... the automatic updates, the automatic updates.... You can't turn them off, and it tricks you into having them. And the github tickets people raise get dismissed by the devs because 'but surely you want the security of updates?'. The idea that people don't want the browser spontaneously restarting (and losing tabs) doesn't seem wrong to them.
I've ditched it for that reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWpPyYlZXNI
They've been airing this ad a lot lately. I'm curious as to how much royalties they have to pay every time they show it for using The Police's "Every Breath You Take" especially since they don't make money from ad revenue and don't charge for using their browser/search engine.
I liked what DDG was spouting when it first became available (and has continued to spout, minus any reference to 'cozying-up' to Microsoft.)
I've been using it for a very long time.
I'm beginning to lose confidence in DDG, and any purity in its motivations.
...may be time to face the reality that Microsoft---and FaecesBook---has everyone in its/their hip-pocket(s)...
"DuckDuckGo slammed by Brave CEO over supposed Microsoft deal"
"Harsh words being exchanged between the two CEOs"
TechRadar
By Sead Fadilpašić
https://www.techradar.com/news/duckduckgo-slammed-by-brave-ceo-over-supposed-microsoft-deal
“The CEO of crypto-oriented browser (opens in new tab) Brave has slammed rival DuckDuckGo over its affiliation to Microsoft and the wider online tracker (opens in new tab) controversy.
For the uninitiated, DuckDuckGo’s mobile browser was recently discovered to have been permitting Microsoft’s trackers (opens in new tab) to operate, while blocking those of Google, and Facebook. Zach Edwards, the security researcher who first discovered the issue, later also found that trackers related to the bing.com and linkedin.com domains were also being allowed through the blocks...”
Mr. Eich, jealousy won't get you anywhere!
In my view, your browser, Brave (not!) - which I tried like probably everyone else here - is just as abysmal for a browser as the duck one. I suspect your jealousy because the duck may have more users? This is what it's all about, isn't it?
Thank you Brendan Eich @Brave for calling out DuckDuckGo! They severely screwed up. That's a shame.
I've been supporting DuckDuckGo from very early on. I knew a significant amount (not all!) of their search results were gleaned from Microsoft's Bing. Note that I ALSO know that Bing itself gleans a significant amount (not all!) of their search results from Google!
But I know the cookie biz well enough to put control of cookies into MY HANDS and no one else's. On macOS I use, support and even beta test the Cookie app from SweetPea Productions. It has consistently worked brilliantly. (Thank you Raymond). No cookie runs free on my computers.
So, shameful as it is that DuckDuckGo made fools of themselves, I Don't Care. I've had idiotic chat warz with even Internet experts. (Hello, Adam). DuckDuckGo works great, if not better than Google in most cases. What are the alternatives?
Quant
Startpage
That's about it, other than the sad wannabes and antiques.
I do regularly run Google in pursuit of its obvious expertise above all other search engines. But I kill its cookies as well as its dialing home via a 'reverse firewall' (Little Snitch app), without regret. I stick with DuckDuckGo because they've successfully and consistently improved themselves over time and I appreciate what bit of anonymity they do provide.
Sadly, what a black eye DDG has given themselves. Stop Hitting Yourself! Stop Hitting Yourself! . . .
This all relies on trust. These are two companies both trying to sell you into trusting them for profit. If you are surprised when any of them turn out to not be as trustworthy as they try to pretend, you're a fool. This is the internet, there is no such thing as genuine privacy. Not with a VPN. Not with the US defence force owned TOR.
It was also very funny for Brave to stand up on a soap box talking about their competitor then when it comes to questions about the website they point to being owned by their employee they go "hey, trust us". Expect companies to put profit before your benefit.
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