Searching for Privacy in an Online World

Searching for Privacy in an Online World

Gabriel Weinberg didn't start off as a privacy warrior. The 33-year-old founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo just wanted to build a better search engine, something more useful than Google which, he believed, was "becoming bogged down by spam and irrelevant search results."

 

Along the way, Weinberg was confronted with the decision about what to do with his users' search information...

What Weinberg found surprised him.

"If you think about it, a search engine is the first place you go if you have a serious problem, like a medical diagnosis. People type in their problems. It's kind of creepy for a search engine to know so much about you."

"I also found that users' search histories were being handed over to government and law enforcement agencies. And beyond the government, there's a commercial equivalent of mass surveillance that people find annoying. Think of all the ads following you around the Internet and targeting you all the time. There's even stuff a lot of people don't know about yet like companies charging you higher prices based on your data profile, which shows that you shop in higher end stores. If you can believe it, you can sit right next to someone, go to the same website and get a different quoted price for an item!"

...Weinberg's search engine doesn't keep any personally identifiable information. DuckDuckGo doesn't identify users with cookies, and deletes user agents and IP addresses from its server logs. According to its privacy page, the site doesn't attempt to generate a so-called anonymized identifier to tie searches together. In other words, DuckDuckGo has no way of even knowing whether two searches came from the same computer.

"My whole thing was, 'How do you make a better search experience?' My thought was you don't need to track people to make money in web search. And you don't need to track people to make better results. So why track people at all?"

..."In addition to great privacy, the site gets you great results. Less clutter and less spam."

To read the entire article click here

To try DuckDuckGo or to add it to your browser: go to www.duckduckgo.com

Related Articles

More From Heritage

Jews in Sports

The Genesis Prize Foundation created the video "Jews in Sports" as shown below to honor Jewish…
Jews in Sports

Mr & Mrs

When people think of finding "the one" or Mr. or Mrs. Right they usually are thinking of…
Mr & Mrs

Jewish Identity

"More than nine-in-ten Jews (94 percent) agree they are 'proud to be Jewish. Three-quarters…
Jewish Identity

Stone

TWO FRIENDS WERE WALKING THROUGH THE DESERT . DURING SOME POINT OF THE JOURNEY, THEY HAD AN…
Stone

Jewish Division: Omar

The Jewish community seems divided over how to respond to US congress person Ilhan Omar and her…
Jewish Division: Omar

Steve Wohlberg

Steven Wohlberg was walking along the beach with Seth, his 2-year-old son, when Seth saw some…
Steve Wohlberg

Getting Real

The "getting real" phenomenon voices itself through the postmodern buzz words "authentic,"…
Getting Real

Children are People Too

Parents may say they love all of their children the same and most people would agree they…
Children are People Too

The Jewish Revolt Against Rome

An overview of the origins and buildup leading to the Jewish revolt against Roman rule in Judea…
The Jewish Revolt Against Rome

It's Cold

Worry no more. This bubbe invented a new app to fix an age old problem.
It's Cold

Shalom Adventure TV Show

We are excited to introduce the Shalom Adventure TV show which contains 13 Episodes and was…
Shalom Adventure TV Show

Publish the Menu module to "offcanvas" position. Here you can publish other modules as well.
Learn More.