[kwlug-disc] DDG in the news again

[Paul Nijjar]

On Thu, May 26, 2022 at 11:18:26PM -0700, Ronald Barnes wrote:
> Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote on 2022-05-26 21:04:
> 
> 
> > Data point: I search for KWLUG on DDG. The link to kwlug.org comes up
> > as the first search result. Great! But the link I click is to
> > "https://duckduckgo.com/l/?uddg=http%3A%2F%2Fkwlug.org%2F&rut=cabb8327a6e42ae258b2db8cddd62e769e7f11e8165b56a492ca6205af89b2bd",
> > not"https://kwlug.org"  .
> 
> I just searched it in a Firefox "incognito" window, and KWLUG.org is the
> first result.  The link is directly to http://kwlug.org/, no tracking.

I can reproduce this in w3m, with the following command: 
w3m "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kwlug"

In Firefox or other browsers I do not get this tracking link.
If I just visit https://duckduckgo.com in w3m and type my query into
the search box I do not get this link.

> > Somebody is tracking my click. Why is this
> > okay in a search engine that pretends to care about my privacy?
> 
> Hypothetically, it would be okay because they merely track "which result
> does a user click for query term 'X'?", which can be used to improve
> results.

They don't need a deceptive link for this. Any kind of web log has a
referrer field. They may not archive web logs but they can use that
information as analytics.

- Paul

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