Privacy-focused company DuckDuckGo is launching a tool to remove data from people-search websites, a VPN, and an identity theft restoration service.
      • @lowleveldata
        13•6 months ago

        I use Kagi. At least I’m the one paying.

        • Howdy
          18•6 months ago

          If it works for you… I agree with the general sentiment of “if its free you are the product”. However, I see kagi come up so often around here that I feel like it’s some astro turfing. I tried it and was not impressed. SearXNG is by far the best search engine I’ve used in a long time and the best part is I am hosting it locally on my PC, traffic is going out a VPN. You get the privacy and the best results possible since its a meta engine using many different engines.

          • @lowleveldata
            7•6 months ago

            I tried it and was not impressed

            It is better than ddg and Brave, that much I can say. Brave especially have been shit recently.

            • Howdy
              2•6 months ago

              Never used brave, I think DDG is actually a pretty decent search engine overall. I use it as my backup to searxng and used it primarily for years now before switching to searxng.

          • Karyoplasma
            5•6 months ago

            Didn’t Google nuke SearX? Or did they only nuke public instances?

            • Howdy
              6•6 months ago

              Google results work fine for me on my home instance:

            • @[email protected]
              5•6 months ago

              If so, I wonder if that timeline lines up with when I was trying SearX. For the first few days I was blown away by the results, and then suddenly they became absolute garbage. I ended up switching back to DDG.

        • @[email protected]
          14•6 months ago

          If you are naive enough to believe that they are not collecting your data. Good for you and your peace of mind.

          • @lowleveldata
            6•6 months ago

            I feel like it’s a good way to get sued if you straight up lie to paying customers

            • Karyoplasma
              16•6 months ago

              Cash out, get sued by angry customers, file for bankruptcy. Who cares about your public image being shattered when you are already gone with the wind?

              • @lowleveldata
                7•6 months ago

                Well at least that gives them more incentive to stay clean compare to other search engines, no?

        • 4dpuzzleEnglish
          4•6 months ago

          These days, paying doesn’t guarantee your exclusion from being the product. The only way to guarantee privacy is to design it into the product.

  • @[email protected]
    21•6 months ago

    I don’t trust Fuck (lol typo, it was an accident, f and d are really close!) DuckDuckGo and stopped using it since the “relevant” ads from Microsoft: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ads-by-microsoft-on-duckduckgo-private-search/ I personally don’t trust them.

    Rather use an open source search engine like SearxNG . If you don’t want host your own search engine, then use a third-party hosted one: https://searx.space/ and probably switch from time to time. Sometimes the search results are slower or not as good, but that is a price I pay.

    • lemmyreaderEnglish
      12•6 months ago

      FckFckGo. I see what you did there.

      +1 for the SearxNG. That project deserves wide spread attention as far as I am concerned.

    • @[email protected]
      11•6 months ago

      Exactly this. I read the article in the post and thought it actually sounds like a nice service, but after getting this ad when searching “depression” on DDG last year, I don’t think I’ll ever trust them again lol.