https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/gop-senators-new...
no one is safe if this bill passes.
Not even close.
VPN involves:
* Knowledge of the purpose of a VPN
* Knowledge of a specific VPN
* Money to pay for VPN
* Maintenance in the form of turning it on/off depending on application
* A method of digitally paying your bill, i.e. a credit card.
In contrast, if you know nothing about computers but open IE/Edge for the first time you'll be prompted to select your search engine.
The article is about Google sharing someone's private searches with the police.
My use of sic erat scriptum means I'm quoting GP, grammatical errors and all. This point, in contrast to the previous one, is pedantic :). (One doesn't share information to someone, but with them. "Google doesn't sell your personal information to, nor share it with, anyone" or "Google doesn't sell or share your personal information" are more correct.)
Still, it's important to note DDG runs on AWS, so Amazon still has access to the entire underlying infrastructure. If served an NSL, Amazon could track all traffic going to/from DDG. In theory, they could also grab the SSL certs from those servers and decrypt SSL traffic as well.
in that sense I don't know (and don't care to learn) the details and whether in the end of the day Yahoo gets a copy of every-thing searched on DDG with the extra info (IP, MAC, browser fingerprint, etc.)
as for the "one at a time" I am totally wih you on this but I think it's a losing war.. WAY TOO many people don't see past their screen into what happens on the bits&bytes exiting their phones/laptops
Now, I cannot find this information on their website. Perhaps they got rid of that collaboration (now that Verizon owns Yahoo)?
Privacy policy https://duckduckgo.com/privacy
But honestly, simply forumulating a query appropraiately can help.
Pagerank basically lets you use search terms like circles on a Venn diagram - whatever's in the intersection floats to the top.
DDG requires a little more effort. Putting quotes around words that group together, using - to exclude large chunks of.
I find when I "search like it's 1999" DDG does fine.
(The syntax page has some useful tips: https://duck.co/help/results/syntax)
Of course, there is also a risk that sometimes I am wrong. There are things that I believed to be true that were not, and I've gone back and told people so. Pursuing truth and being transparent about my mistakes and missteps builds trust.
People may not like me, and I'm fine with that. I would rather have their respect than their admiration. If they do not respect me, then I will do them the courtesy of keeping my opinions to myself. I don't waste my breath on cynics.
Appealing to authority can be a fallacious way to reason, however it can also be done correctly, and is a powerful way to influence people. I love your visual of phone/quote/mic drop - that'd definitely be the wrong way to do it :)
People are starting to wake up to the implications of a world without privacy. I carry around Snowden's quote on my phone and repeat it verbatim when people say they have nothing to hide:
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say".
Do not be discouraged. Just keep educating people one-by-one and we will win this fight. We have to, otherwise our ancestors who fought and died for freedom and liberty will have done so in vain.