[tor-talk] Invaded by disconnect.me

[Alexis Wattel]

Well, when one cares about privacy, using Google's service at all prices is kind of a cheat on the principle. 
Why bother getting results from an untrusted company, while another made the choice not to spy its users ? 

And of course, I wouldn't recommend Duckduckgo if searches weren't as good as Google's. But it is at least equally good on my opinion. I use it pretty much all the time since many months, and have never regretted Google, except for Maps searches, that's the only feature I see missing. But you get also great exclusive features like fetching answers directly from Stack Overflow, Wikipedia,... and !bang searches are useful. 

If this list is not the place to welcome Duckduckgo's praise, I don't know what will. 
Either you take real action to truly live a little further away from Google, or either you go for the band-aid method. 

Startpage and Cie are substitution drugs whereas Duckduckgo is a genuine alternative. 

Le 2 juin 2015 04:06:47 CEST, Mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> a écrit :
>On 06/01/2015 07:26 PM, Colin Arnott wrote:
>> If there are issues with startpage, is there any reason not to use
>duckduckgo 
>> as default? I use their hidden service as my default search engine
>and have 
>> never had issues with them.
>
>DuckDuckgo's search results are pretty much useless, a waste of time.
>Startpage is a very good Google gateway, and the proxy option is cool.
>But it was serving CAPTCHAs, maybe worse than Google's. Disconnect is
>fast, with no CAPTCHAs, and provides protected access to Google Search
>Tools, Images, Videos and News.
>
>Also, as I've noted, Tor browser _does not_ have the Disconnect add-on
>installed. So presumably it just hits https:/search.disconnect.me/
>directly, and nothing critical is getting shared. I presume that this
>has been explored carefully. Maybe someone can share about that.
>
>> 1. Jun 2015 09:08 by spencerone at openmailbox.org:
>> 
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>> gary02121993:
>>>> Oh man this sucks! Why isn't StartPage the default search engine
>anyway?
>>>> Can someone link me the back story?
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>
>>> You might find value in this:
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------
>>>>>>> intrigeri:
>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>> we're in the process of upgrading Tor Browser to 4.5 in Tails,
>and
>>>>>>> I noticed the migration to Disconnect Search as the default
>search
>>>>>>> engine. That's the kind of changes that we often have to justify
>in
>>>>>>> face of users and auditors, but I wasn't able to find the
>rationale
>>>>>>> behind this decision on the corresponding ticket.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I see the release announcement says:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "Disconnect provides private Google search results to Tor users
>>>>>>> without Captchas or bans."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Georg:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Startpage was not happy with our traffic and showed sometimes
>>>>>> CAPTCHAs. Disconnect on the other hand approached us with respect
>to
>>>>>> search engine traffic and donated some money.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> intrigeri:
>>>>> So, just to clarify: is that the entire rationale behind this
>move?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Georg:
>>>> Yes, although the donated money does not really count here. That
>did not
>>>> influence the decision but I figured it might be good to add this
>anyway
>>>> for transparency reasons.
>>>>
>>> -----------------------------------
>>>
>>> Wordlife,
>>> Spencer
>>>
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