DuckDuckGo: Search Online Without Having It All Turned Into Data To Track And Sell To You
- Saren Meserkhani
- Aug 10, 2020
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 19, 2020
Hey, it's none of my business, and it's not anyone else's business either, sometimes you need to do a Google search on a known neo-nazi or problematic provocateur for a research paper, maybe to write about your opposition to their statements and philosophy. You really don't need Google logging those searches to go creating a completely false, A.I.-driven data profile on you and how maybe you might just be a neo-nazi yourself, to later program your targeted algorithm to recommend you "borderline" white-supremacist content in order to maybe keep you surfing the web longer. Imagine that type of data being permanently linked to your personal Google profile that you use for work. That is the power of Google, now think back to how you've used their service for the past decade. YouTube video recommendations may be the ultimate example for actually seeing this invasive practice in action.
If you use Yahoo or Bing searches while logged into a Yahoo or Outlook account, they're doing the same things, maybe not on the same scale as Google, but make no mistake: this is how these "free" services make a good chunk of their profits. Profiling its users based on their searches, as data forever saved on their massive servers. That's how multi-billion dollar corporations sell "free" in today's world.
The only downside is, they're really, REALLY good at providing you the results you need. Well, Google is, Yahoo and Bing are pretty awful in my opinion. Google's search results are a modern-day publicly accessed superpower for our society, there's no denying it. Even the Google Assistant on Android phones, and their swift capability to read the best result out loud to you and everyone else in the room who had a burning question they needed an answer to. It's incredible.
Sometimes you don't need all that jazz. Sometimes what you're searching is very simple, maybe impulsive, and you can get the exact results you need from a community-based non-profit search engine that has a vested interest in NOT collecting data on your searches and just leaving you the hell alone! Let's check it out!
You've heard me mention it so many times in my articles, I figured it was time it had its own article, considering how many different options they provide for online privacy. It all starts here on duckduckgo.com, your replacement for Google searches. It's not a permanent replacement, mind you, but it's great for impulse searches that allow you to provide less data for Google when you really just don't need them knowing what you're looking in to.
Google might be able to find you a specific excerpt from a Wiki article that you're asking about, but you don't need Google just to find the Wiki article, DDG will find it just as easily.
Google has that cool calculator feature where you type in a math equation and Google will solve it. DDG has it too. I don't know if it is as advanced, but not all equations are advanced.
The main advantage is to avoid having every search you make immediately logged and turned into data.
But yeah, truth is not every search you make on DDG will be satisfying, and you'll end up needing Google. So I came up with a method to be able to alternate between DDG and Google in the most efficient/least annoying way possible, and it got even better over time.
First, you want to go into your settings and make DuckDuckGo your default search. If you use the address bar to do a search for Google, you are probably doing it by impulse at this point. If you change your default search to DuckDuckGo, your impulse searches won't automatically become data. To the bottom of this screenshot is what you're looking for in your Chrome/Iron browser settings.
CHROME/IRON USERS:
> Click the 3 vertical dots in the top-right of your browser, or just visit chrome://settings/ in your address bar.
> Scroll down to "Search engine", you'll probably see "Google" for the "Search engine used in the address bar" section
> Click the drop-down and select DuckDuckGo
FIREFOX USERS:
> It'll be easier just to type in or copy-paste about:preferences#search in your address bar
> Go to Default Search Engine, click the drop-down, select DuckDuckGo
Now here's the part that allows switching between Google and DDG to be far less annoying or inconvenient.
Check this extension out.
Just install it, and then do a search on DuckDuckGo.
Now look under the search bar, where it says "All Regions", "Safe Search: Moderate", "Any Time", and then you'll see something that says "Search on Google" or "Google it".
If you don't like your DuckDuckGo results, just click that, and the Google results will appear in a new tab.
Now you can enjoy using the internet so much more, knowing that you're snuffing Google out of a significant amount of data that they would have profited from at your expense. Tell your friends, the more people doing this the better!
By the way, given that I mentioned earlier how blatant YouTube is about using your data against you in real-time, I thought I'd take a second to mention that searching for a YouTube video in DDG will allow you to watch the video without Google being able to link it back to you and your personal account. Just find "Videos" below the search bar on the site where it says "All Images Videos News Maps", click it, then just treat it like it's YouTube.
Mobile Browser
Both Apple and Android users get to take advantage of this gem. I use multiple mobile browsers for multiple different reasons, but when my Android asks me which browser I want to use to open random nonsense links from Facebook, I choose DDG, because when I'm all done reading articles, I can burn it all up, and all the information and cookies and trackers that would have been collected and stored by any other browser are disintegrated. Plus, it blocks ads! Unfortunately not all the ads, but most of them.
By the way, when I say "burn it all up" I mean there's an icon in the top-right that looks like a flame, check the screenshot on the right. Press it and then click "Clear All Tabs and Data" and it's all gone. They made it much, MUCH easier than other browsers.
I know that on Samsung phones, when you download a new browser, your settings clear the default, and you'll have to choose your browser again the next time you open a link. I strongly recommend not setting a default browser if you can help it. All you need to do is double-click the browser, and it opens in that browser, no need to click "Always" or even "Just Once" at the bottom. (Not sure what the procedure is with iPhone, hopefully it is something similar and doesn't force you to set a default and only ever open with said default.)
Setting the settings for ultimate privacy is really easy.
> Press the 3 vertical dots in the top-right
> Press "Settings"
> Find "Automatically clear..." and choose "Tabs and data"
> Find "Clear on..." and choose "App exit only"
All the other privacy settings you usually have to find with other browsers, are all enabled by default on DDG.
The one thing I've realized about the DDG mobile browser is that exiting the app won't log you out of accounts you may have logged in to. You HAVE to use the Fire button in order to easily log out of everything.
Also, because DDG is technically in permanent "incognito mode", voice-to-text typing is completely disabled. Makes sense though, every single thing you say with that feature becomes a soundbyte saved on a hard drive at Google for employees to listen to whenever they're bored or something.
By the way, if you're looking for a mobile browser that blocks ads and isn't set up to wipe away all the data, let's you use voice-to-text etc., check out Ghostery. Play Store App Store
Browser Extension
Alright so this is another extension that blocks ads and trackers, and it also forces your browser to use DDG as the default search engine, so installing this extension would allow you to skip that step in the first chapter.
There is a reason I've placed this at the bottom of the article. I have seen more websites break due to this extension in particular, than any of the other ad/tracker blocking extensions. I've even seen duckduckgo.com ITSELF malfunction and traced it back to the extension, so already not looking too hot as a recommendation.
Personally, I use it, and I have learned to try turning this off whenever a website is broken.
When you click on the extension in the top-right, you'll see a window pop up under it that looks like the screenshot on the right. To turn off DDG protection for a broken site, turn off "Site Privacy Protection".
Also, if you're trying to read an article that uses tweets for its story, this extension disables those tweets by default, Twitter is notorious for adding trackers to literally everything. You can turn this off though.
> Click the extension, click the 3 horizontal lines in the top-right, click "Settings
> Under "Options", switch on "Show Embedded Tweets"
> Also look under that for "Global Privacy Control (GPC)", switch that on, DDG is working to implement a universal law to require websites to respect a user's request that they do NOT want to be tracked/watched online.
One thing I like about this extension though, is how it shows you the "privacy grade" of the website you're on. Apparently Wix receives a B+, not bad. Google and YouTube straight up got a D grade, yikes. When you disable "Site Privacy Protection" you will suddenly see all the active trackers that will be watching you if you keep protection off.
Of course, there is Ghostery, Privacy Badger, Nano, all extensions I've mentioned in an article dedicated to extensions, and they also block trackers and cookies and ads, and yeah they too have a history of breaking websites, but their track record of website-breaking so far is a lot better than DDG's.
So in terms of recommending this extension, I'm neutral. If you can handle the breaking and remember to try switching the extension off when it happens, then I absolutely recommend it. But due to how many times I've seen websites break specifically because of DDG's extension, well, I'm not about to insist.
Happy websurfing! Feel free to ask me anything with the form provided at the bottom of the website :)
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