(FYI -- this was discussed extensively yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515) and I left a comment on that thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490603, but below is a new one. This is also a very misleading title since it's not about search, Microsoft scripts are actually restricted, etc. I Would suggest changing it to something like what ultimately the one from yesterday got changed to, Bing contract prohibits DuckDuckGo from completely blocking Microsoft scripts on 3rd party sites.)
I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo. To be clear (since I see a lot of confusion going around about this story), when you load our search results, you are anonymous, including ads. Also on 3rd-party websites we actually do block Microsoft 3rd-party cookies in our browsers plus more protections including fingerprinting protection. That is, this article is not about our search engine, but about our browsers -- we have browsers (really all-in-one privacy apps) for iOS, Android, and now Mac (in beta).
When most other browsers on the market talk about tracking protection they are usually referring to 3rd-party cookie protection and fingerprinting protection, and our browsers impose these same restrictions on all third-party tracking scripts, including those from Microsoft. We also have a lot of other above-and-beyond web protections that also apply to Microsoft scripts (and everyone else), e.g., Global Privacy Control, first-party cookie expiration, referrer header trimming, new cookie consent handling (in our Mac beta), fire button (one-click) data clearing, and more.
What this article is talking about specifically is another above-and-beyond protection that most browsers don't even attempt to do for web protection — stopping third-party tracking scripts from even loading on third-party websites -- because this can easily cause websites to break. But we've taken on that challenge because it makes for better privacy, and faster downloads -- we wrote a blog post about it here - https://spreadprivacy.com/browser-privacy-protection/. Because we're doing this above-and-beyond protection where we can, and offer many other unique protections (e.g., Google AMP/FLEDGE/Topics protection, automatic HTTPS upgrading, tracking protection for *other* apps in Android, email protection to block trackers for emails sent to your regular inbox, etc.), users get way more privacy protection with our app than they would using other browsers. Our goal has always been to provide the most privacy we can in one download.
The issue at hand is, while most of our protections like 3rd-party cookie blocking apply to Microsoft scripts on 3rd-party sites (again, this is off of DuckDuckGo,com, i.e., not related to search), we are currently contractually restricted by Microsoft from completely stopping them from loading (the one above-and-beyond protection explained in the last paragraph) on 3rd party sites. We still restrict them though (e.g., no 3rd party cookies allowed). The original example was Workplace.com loading a LinkedIn.com script. Nevertheless, we have been and are working with Microsoft as we speak to reduce or remove this limited restriction.
I understand this is all rather confusing because it is a search syndication contract that is preventing us from doing a non-search thing. That's because our product is a bundle of multiple privacy protections, and this is a distribution requirement imposed on us as part of the search syndication agreement that helps us privately use some Bing results to provide you with better private search results overall. While a lot of what you see on our results page privately incorporates content from other sources, inc...
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 48.0 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515
I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo. To be clear (since I see a lot of confusion going around about this story), when you load our search results, you are anonymous, including ads. Also on 3rd-party websites we actually do block Microsoft 3rd-party cookies in our browsers plus more protections including fingerprinting protection. That is, this article is not about our search engine, but about our browsers -- we have browsers (really all-in-one privacy apps) for iOS, Android, and now Mac (in beta).
When most other browsers on the market talk about tracking protection they are usually referring to 3rd-party cookie protection and fingerprinting protection, and our browsers impose these same restrictions on all third-party tracking scripts, including those from Microsoft. We also have a lot of other above-and-beyond web protections that also apply to Microsoft scripts (and everyone else), e.g., Global Privacy Control, first-party cookie expiration, referrer header trimming, new cookie consent handling (in our Mac beta), fire button (one-click) data clearing, and more.
What this article is talking about specifically is another above-and-beyond protection that most browsers don't even attempt to do for web protection — stopping third-party tracking scripts from even loading on third-party websites -- because this can easily cause websites to break. But we've taken on that challenge because it makes for better privacy, and faster downloads -- we wrote a blog post about it here - https://spreadprivacy.com/browser-privacy-protection/. Because we're doing this above-and-beyond protection where we can, and offer many other unique protections (e.g., Google AMP/FLEDGE/Topics protection, automatic HTTPS upgrading, tracking protection for *other* apps in Android, email protection to block trackers for emails sent to your regular inbox, etc.), users get way more privacy protection with our app than they would using other browsers. Our goal has always been to provide the most privacy we can in one download.
The issue at hand is, while most of our protections like 3rd-party cookie blocking apply to Microsoft scripts on 3rd-party sites (again, this is off of DuckDuckGo,com, i.e., not related to search), we are currently contractually restricted by Microsoft from completely stopping them from loading (the one above-and-beyond protection explained in the last paragraph) on 3rd party sites. We still restrict them though (e.g., no 3rd party cookies allowed). The original example was Workplace.com loading a LinkedIn.com script. Nevertheless, we have been and are working with Microsoft as we speak to reduce or remove this limited restriction.
I understand this is all rather confusing because it is a search syndication contract that is preventing us from doing a non-search thing. That's because our product is a bundle of multiple privacy protections, and this is a distribution requirement imposed on us as part of the search syndication agreement that helps us privately use some Bing results to provide you with better private search results overall. While a lot of what you see on our results page privately incorporates content from other sources, inc...