Published on: February 23, 2021
DuckDuckGo promises to provide a privacy friendly no-logs search engine to netizens. Why is it so important to be tracking safe on the web if you have nothing to hide and nothing to fear? Its not that employees of Bing and Google are sitting on their couch scrolling through your browsing history laughing at the search queries you made in your favorite browser’s incognito mode.
Why do we need privacy online?
You need privacy online because its your right as a human. People search up many things which they certainly do not want anyone to find out. Maybe your spouse searches up how to be a better other half and wants privacy for this reason.
Just kidding. People want privacy because they do not wish to be sold to businesses. They do not want their activities to be profiled across various devices/ accounts and finally merged. For example, if they searched up how to reduce hairfall, they certainly do not want hairfall related ads to show up when they are presenting something on their office’s projector.
How did they come up with the name DuckDuckGo?
It is rumored that the developer of DDG was working on her laptop in the park when all of sudden a duck approached and started eating her burger. She threw a piece of her burger away and said “Duck Duck Go! eat that”. That’s when she realized DuckDuckGo could be a better name for a search engine than the previously decided name GoogleDontGo. (PS: I am the one who created this rumor theory for the sake of humor).
What data does DuckDuckGo collect?
DuckDuckGo collects minimal data for improvement of the product.
Data collection url: improving.duckduckgo.com
DuckDuckGo knows your IP address (every site does), device type (example – android/ ios/ windows/ mac/ linux) and the language you want to see results in. Also, it know how fast your internet connection, browser and dns servers are. DuckDuckGo knows when you close a banner (for example – the install app banner) on its site. DuckDuckGo uses cookies to remember that you have closed banners and to avoid showing them to you again. No cookies are used for tracking purpose.