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DuckDuckGo Scripts Everywhere – Tracking Links?

22 points by OrvalWintermute ↗ HN
I've been noticing DDG scripts on a large amount of the websites I visit, found through DDG.

Are these conventional tracking links similar to Google&Facebook, or are they something else?

16 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 40.5 ms ] thread
ohCh6zos
Is there a way you can post an example? I'm not certain I know what you mean.
aaaaaaaaata
What does DDG have that Qwant.con and Ecosia.org don't do better?
night-rider
Ecosia sells your data and uses the money to plant trees. Avoid it like the plague
monetus
I asked about qwant once and Europeans chimed in with the opinion that its results suck. Ddg isn't a terrible browser or engine, less shady than brave IMO.
nanna
So far this is no more than a vague unsubstantiated insinuation. This is HN - could you give us something to work with?
archildress
I can't say enough good things about Kagi Search. I dropped it in as my Google replacement a couple of months ago and don't want to go back.

https://kagi.com/search

OJFord
I assume this is referring to 'improving.duckduckgo.com'.

I don't know what it's for, but I've noticed it too. Disabled by my default uMatrix rules, (more generally by virtue of being third-party) and I never have to enable it for a working site.

OrvalWintermute
This is a sample of what I see some of the time [1] similar to what you said.

I've also seen it more than this too at other times. Always from following DDG links onto destinations like this, but at other times what looks more like a google tracker.

[1] https://postimg.cc/23Cw80cS

yegg
These are completely anonymous requests that help us improve the search engine. See https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/atb/ (also linked to from https://improving.duckduckgo.com/) and discussed on HN before at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18435882 & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30741090

These anonymous requests actually fire from the search engine and are not related to or embedded in other websites at all, so I suspect the tool you are using is erroneously attributing them. People commented about that in the above threads, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30742751

OrvalWintermute
Besides improving.duckduckgo.com , what other URLs have anonymous requests being made to DDG too that would trigger umatrix?
yegg
I'm not very familiar with umatrix though none others come to mind, and in any case all requests to duckduckgo.com domains are anonymous by design since (as that article notes in more detail) we have our web servers and related applications set up to not log any IP addresses or other unique identifiers with requests. If you want to DM me on Twitter though I can look into it more.
yegg
I just looked at umatrix, and yes, those look like completely anonymous requests to improving.duckduckgo.com that are being erroneously attributed to originating from that page when in fact they originated from the anonymous search results.
gsk22
So what's the implication, that DDG is deceiving its users through tracking scripts? Wouldn't this also require buy-in from individual websites to include the DDG script?

Any amount of details would be useful to evaluate your claim.

OrvalWintermute
An image of what was observed was posted below OJFord's comment.