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Re:Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tra... by grzm on Friday October 21, 2016 @10:33AM (#12760752)
> 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage.

Or even Google.

I've seen comments online about DDG providing only an illusion of privacy. I haven't dug into this deeply. From what I've read this comes down to DDG (including bang searches like !g and !sp) stripping identifying information, which provides protection from tracking by entities like advertisers and social networks, but not law enforcement or agencies like the NSA that may have legal options or extralegal access. Is my understanding generally correct? Any corrections/additions/clarifications appreciated.

Re:Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tra... by sambobeckingham on Friday October 21, 2016 @12:22PM (#12761713)
DDG don't track your IP or log activity against you. Bang searches are simply redirects as far as I'm aware and thus !g is equivalent to typing straight into Google.

But if you're using Google through DDG you're probably missing the point.

Re:Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tra... by dredmorbius on Friday October 21, 2016 @02:16PM (#12763068)
Using Google through DDG is useful because of the bang searches. It's actually faster for me to get to, say, image, scholar, books, ngram, or maps (though I prefer OpenStreetMap) searches from DDG than it is through Google's own web interface.

It's faster to do that, in further irony, on Firefox rather than Chrome (on Android), because Chrome/Android doesn't allow specifying DDG as a default search engine.

(I prefer Firefox for multiple features including extensions (adblock, hul-fucking-lo), and Reader Mode, but motherlovin' heck is Firefox every laggy and slow on Android...)

I'll run a DDG search, for all the reasons stated above, then re-run it to Google if I must. It's still faster than finding Google's search page and entering a search (and clicking past multiple nags and seeing multiple distracting animations).

Two more reasons for Google:

1. Specific date-bounds on search.

2. Counts of results by domain (Desktop only)