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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Is this for real? DuckDuckGo has grown in popularity primarily on its claim: We don't track you. Is this no longer true?
DuckDuckGo now fingerprinting visitors
DuckDuckGo is using the Canvas DOMRect API on their search engine. Canvas is used to make unique geometry measurements on target browsers, and DOMRect API uses rectangles. This can be verified with the CanvasBlocker Firefox add-on by Korbinian Kapsner. DDG has recently been redirecting some website navigations to cute pictures with remarks about their privacy promises. The organization is now seeking to expand their Internet presence. DDG are without question data brokers, and commercial websites that make promises like DDG does will not survive for long if they actually keep them.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Thursday January 10 2019, @05:55PM (3 children)
Back in the dark days of around 2001, Google were the people who wouldn't track you half as much as their competitors at the time (Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, etc), had the motto "Don't be evil", and were seen as the geeky alternative to Microsoft. Then came the IPO, some suits decided that tracking people more closely would help make their ads more pricey, and off they went to the point where they're one of the worst when it comes to how closely they track people.
Facebook was once the relatively good guy as well, because MySpace had become thoroughly evil back in 2006 or so.
I expect the same thing to happen to DuckDuckGo, and to any other alternative available. It's a long-standing formula: Be a good guy to gain market share, then once you have market share become a bad guy to "monetize".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 10 2019, @07:57PM (1 child)
So in conclusion -- over time everything corrupts and becomes evil? Who will slay the duck?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:12PM
The Borg will assimilate the duck, and women will inherit the earth. Or something like that. I may have mixed up my metaphors somewhere along the way.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @02:01AM
Not only that; in those days, Google was different from other search engines because they didn’t take payola from sites to artificially bump them up in the rankings. Until then it was S.O.P. for most search engines.