Privacy Policies—A Review Of DuckDuckGo

Issues With Search Engine Privacy Policies

For those of us that live in a land of liberties, few are more precious to us than privacy. As the Internet became the most common way of connecting to society, it also opened privacy challenges that still exist. Even though most Internet users are aware of the privacy issues, most do not understand how the privacy leaks occur and how to mitigate such. Although there are many vectors for privacy leaks, the most common is through search engines, for most of us a daily process. The problem with the browser search engines is that they not only reside on our computers, laptops, etc., but also on our mobile devices.

Here is a website that provides a lot of useful information about leakage:

https://www.browserleaks.com/

Privacy leaks that occur via the browser and search engine are:

-exposing your location
-tracking your behavior (personalized ads)
-private searching terms (personal searching habits shared with Google)
-your search history
-personal information is collected/recorded and tied to your searches (also shared with others via IP addresses, cookies, etc.)

It is prudent that all users research the privacy policies of any search engine used. After doing so, I decided to give DuckDuckGo a try and have been satisfied thus far.

The DuckDuckGo Search Engine

DuckDuckGo was created by its founder, with privacy in mind. Its policy says “DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell.”

DuckDuckGo looks like most search engine pages, very simple:

Some search engines like Google filter your search results based on sites you have visited in the past. DuckDuckGo does not follow this practice, no matter the user, search terms provide the same results for all searches. If search engine privacy is a concern, give DuckDuckGo a try.

You can use DuckDuckGo by visiting DuckDuckGo.com, installing the browser extension or add-on, and you can also use it on mobile devices as seen below.