DuckDuckGo: The Privacy-centric Alternative to Google
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 21st Jun 2011 09:33 UTC
Internet & Networking Remember when Altavista was the search engine? Or Yahoo? They stuffed their search pages with useless, distracting crap, and using them became unpleasant. And then, bam, along came Google, with a simple, clear search page and uncluttered search results. However, now that Google has become this massive behemoth, tracking our every move, and tailoring our search results, leading to only being fed those pages you agree with - isn't it time for something new? Something simple? It might be, and you've undoubtedly heard of them: DuckDuckGo. I'm switching. Update: Just got an email from Gabriel Weinberg, the guy behind DuckDuckGo. The OSNews !bang (!osnews) is now live!
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RE: referer header
by earksiinni on Wed 22nd Jun 2011 15:12 UTC in reply to "referer header"
earksiinni
Member since:
2009-03-27

Sorry, could you explain this one a little bit? I tried DDG'ing "get vs. post privacy search" but couldn't find anything.

(No, seriously, why is one considered more private than the other? I also read the privacy setting description but it wasn't entirely helpful.)

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[2]: referer header
by Lennie on Wed 22nd Jun 2011 23:32 in reply to "RE: referer header"
Lennie Member since:
2007-09-22

Here is the long version:

Every webpage you visit or any image and so on that is downloaded by the browser includes an extra header of where the referrer was.

So let's say you search on Google for OSnews and you click on the link that points to www.osnews.com.

The browser will send a request to the www.osnews.com server and include a header which say: http://www.google.com/search?q=osnews

Most webservers are setup to log every request in a logfile. And if people checked the logfile or some statistics program they would see that someone searched for osnews on Google and visited their site because of it.

The frontpage of DDG and Google have a 'search-form' as you know.

There are 2 ways a (search-)form can be used as 'GET' which will put all the information of the form in the URL. Or the POST which does not and allows for sending larger information like files.

So if you set it up as a POST it won't be in the URL, so the referer header will, so the search-terms will not be recorded in the logs.

Why does DDG include it in the URL-bar by default and why does Google do it ? I think it is because then people can bookmark it.

Edited 2011-06-22 23:33 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2