[HN Gopher] DuckDuckGo email protection beta now open
___________________________________________________________________
DuckDuckGo email protection beta now open
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 203 points
Date : 2022-08-25 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spreadprivacy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (spreadprivacy.com)
| TopGreg wrote:
| milkoolong wrote:
| I was able to generate a random private duck address
| (o8oyr2f8@duck.com) that's connected to my name@duck.com which
| then forwards to my personal gmail. I can change the forwarding
| address too which helps when I move from gmail to a private-er
| service. Please send me your best educational spams at the
| address above. It will self-destruct shortly when I generate a
| new private address. Really cool to see more offerings like
| these.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is a great idea, but it's going to take nearly zero time for
| companies to decide not to accept private duck addresses for
| business purposes.
|
| DDG is signing themselves up for a hard challenge, though I think
| they're up to it. Once you offer a service like this, you take
| upon yourself the burden of maximizing the outbound signal-noise
| ratio for emails, or you run the risk that other email providers
| identify your node as damaged and route around it. So they'll
| have to be on top of uses of their service for spam and
| aggressively police and kill those accounts. I'm excited to see
| what special sauce they're bringing to the field in this space.
| chenshuiluke wrote:
| Is there a way to integrate something like this with Bitwarden?
| Vinnl wrote:
| Bitwarden does integrate with a couple of similar services:
| https://bitwarden.com/blog/add-privacy-and-security-using-em...
|
| (Disclosure: I work on one of them, Firefox Relay.)
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| I have this with FastMail - it's really cool. Even has 1Password
| integration to automatically create the emails.
| Osmium wrote:
| Bystander impression from other comments I've read on DuckDuckGo
| posts recently: they have good intentions but behind-the-scenes
| are a bit less rigorous on privacy than would be ideal. Is this
| an accurate impression from anyone who knows more?
|
| For example, see discussion in this thread[0]. Even though the
| article itself seemed misleading, many commenters raised some
| good points.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515
| monetus wrote:
| They have pushed that contract to the limit thankfully. You can
| load up Firefox with ad blockers and then compare and contrast
| with their browser. They do as well as allowed, and have extra
| value adds. More well intentioned than brave imo.
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| Just tested this with https://www.emailprivacytester.com
|
| Removed three trackers, but left several in place.
| tuckerman wrote:
| I've eventually settled on using fastmail and their masked email
| feature which can create addresses on my own domain for this. I
| love DDG and appreciate anyone helping in this space to make
| email more manageable but I assume these addresses will be
| quickly blocked from many services just like the firefox relay
| addresses are.
|
| I wish there was a way for these relay services to be effective
| since they are much, much easier to get someone to use than
| telling them to just up and move from gmail to fastmail.
| drchiu wrote:
| I've heard of fastmail in years past. Your comment got me
| curious again about it. How's the deliverability of their
| service? I guess with anything "email related", the hardest
| part is making sure that the emails I send actually ends up
| where I intend to go. (Goes without saying, outbound emails are
| NOT spam but legitimate emails.)
| cxr wrote:
| I was a paid Fastmail user for something like 3 or 4 years,
| largely as a consequence of the good standing they seemed to
| have among the audience on HN. Deliverability (and uptime)
| with Fastmail is excellent.
|
| However, during that time I filed two support tickets and
| neither left me feeling particularly warm and fuzzy about the
| faces behind the business that I was pledging my annual
| subscription to. The response in the latter instance in fact
| was so bad that it's what motivated me to look elsewhere
| rather than renew. I was prepared to pay more just to know
| that I wasn't doing business with bullies/jerks. I ended up
| going with a smaller provider. Without checking, my annual
| expenses are actually around half as much, IIRC.
| blibble wrote:
| could you be a bit more specific?
|
| I've been using them for 18 months and the support has been
| not perfect, but 100x that of e.g. Amazon support chat
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Are you worried that a smaller provider may be less
| reliable in the long run, or you are already prepared to
| just switch your domain again if it becomes an issue? If
| you are ok sharing it, what is the provider?
|
| I really wanted to switch to Fastmail a few years back but
| 1) its registration page was intermittently down for me and
| 2) when I caught it during uptime, it sent me to phone SMS
| verification which I found invasive given it is a paid
| service. I was ready to give it a chance anyway, but no SMS
| got delivered to me in the end.
| cxr wrote:
| "Smaller" in this case just means smaller, not newer.
| They've been in business for a long time, and I expect
| them to be around for a while. The downsides tend to be
| in the opposite direction: they're old, and their
| webmail/account management interface until recently
| showed its age. This was not a problem in my book; I
| don't use webmail. The greater concern with mail
| providers involves the risk that they would pull
| something like what Gmail did and withdraw from offering
| standards-based email (i.e. no more IMAP). In that
| respect, what the sluggishness to get with the trends
| really means is a lower risk rate of churn, and I'm happy
| with that.
|
| Your profile doesn't list a way to contact you privately.
|
| As of last year, it's supposed to be one of the services
| listed on <https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-
| systems>, but it's not. I just reached out to Greg
| Farough to follow up on why.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Thanks, that FSF link might be good enough. (I don't want
| to identify this account and don't immediately know how
| to set up an anonymous throwaway email)
|
| By the way, according to my Mail's connection doctor on
| mac, it appears to use IMAP when talking to gmail as of
| now. I wasn't aware Google was phasing out proper IMAP
| support, my concern was more about them being known to
| ban accounts with little recourse.
| tuckerman wrote:
| I've never had any deliverability issues with Fastmail and am
| happy with their uptime. I originally used google apps (aka
| gsuite/workspaces these days) but had enough headaches using
| it for personal email that I switched and the quality of
| service feels the same to me.
| kmfrk wrote:
| Fastmail is awesome. I'd combine DDG Email with their Masked
| Email in the cases where you want to strip image tracking and
| opaque tracking urls from your links.
| milkoolong wrote:
| I use tutanota and the alias works. But didn't know masked
| emails were offered by services like fastmail!
| cscheid wrote:
| (I've been a happy paying customer of Fastmail for _years_ and
| I didn't know about masked email. Thank you!)
| tuckerman wrote:
| Just in case you happen to be a 1Password user as well, there
| is an integration where they can auto-generate masked emails
| for you: https://support.1password.com/fastmail/ It makes it
| very convenient!
| alexchro93 wrote:
| Auto-generated masked emails using Fastmail and 1Password
| has worked very well for me when I'm using Firefox, with
| the 1Password extension installed, on my laptop.
|
| I can't for the life of me, however, figure out how to get
| 1Password to auto-gen a masked email from their iPhone app
| or desktop app.
|
| Is this possible?
| muhammadusman wrote:
| You can also use a custom domain (and/or anything else
| Fastmail lets you choose), this way you can put all the
| randomly generated emails coming to you in a single folder
| (as a rule).
| yubiox wrote:
| You need to put your real address as the from address in replies,
| not the duck address. DuckDG then strips out the real one and
| replaces it with the duck one, it seems.
| TopGreg wrote:
| datavirtue wrote:
| No dots or underscores allowed?
| neon_electro wrote:
| Probably on purpose to avoid firstnamelastname@,
| firstname.lastname@, and firstname_lastname@ variations being
| abused.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Just a note... an email anonymous relay that lets you use custom
| domains is a much better alternative if you ever plan on
| migrating away. SimpleLogin is open source and allows you to
| export the information so that if their service ever goes offline
| you have a backup and can recover your aliases.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Could someone explain a bit about where this fits in?
|
| Is this an e-mail provider? A client? Something else?
|
| If I have X Provider and I access it using Y client (ie,
| Thunderbird), what exactly does this add/replace/enhance? Where
| does "Relay" fit in since some people here mention it?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| It looks like it is just a forwarder, so it doesn't replace
| your existing mail provider.
| CharlesW wrote:
| It's a privacy-focused "email forwarding" service, which I
| think is synonymous with "email routing" service.
|
| Competitors would include Cloudflare1 and Apple2.
|
| 1 https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-email-routing/
|
| 2 https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/what-you-can-do-
| with-...
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| So I could set up a new e-mail address, have it forward to my
| existing e-mail address, and DDG does some filtering/spam
| protection before it does the forward?
| [deleted]
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| DDG declared themselves part of the Ministry Of Truth earlier
| this year and I jumped ship immediately to brave search:
| https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318
|
| I will have nothing to do with any of their products and no
| longer recommend them to others.
| yegg wrote:
| I (the author of the tweet you referenced) commented on this
| subject on this thread here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32597340. We didn't do
| that, e.g., we actually did not (and do not) censor anything
| for political purposes, we don't do any URL-level fact
| checking, etc.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| No one gets to be the decision maker on what is
| misinformation and what isn't. Nobody is the exception to
| that rule. No matter how good faith and good their intentions
| are. It's not _how_ you 're doing it, it's that you're trying
| to do it at all that is the problem.
| cedilla wrote:
| I refuse to believe that anyone who thinks that 1984's main
| takeaway is that there is no objective truth and that any
| attempt to stand against propaganda is a greater crime than the
| propaganda lies themselves has actually read it.
|
| The problem with minitru is that 2 plus 2 does not, in fact,
| equal 5. It's not that saying one fact is true is somehow
| immoral.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _I refuse to believe that anyone who thinks that 1984 's
| main takeaway is that there is no objective truth and that
| any attempt to stand against propaganda is a greater crime
| than the propaganda lies themselves has actually read it._
|
| The issue has never been about truth itself. It's always been
| that you should allow no single entity to be the arbiter of
| what is the truth, because everyone has an agenda, and
| organizations have multiple people with multiple agendas.
| Terretta wrote:
| Speaking of truth, what prompted you to call yourself akin to a
| natural phallus on HN?
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| I don't like the naturalistic fallacy (nor any others) that
| people use to justify things as being Good(tm). And dicks are
| objectively* funny so "naturalistic phallacy" makes makes for
| a funny phrase, that implicitly mocks the Naturalistic
| Fallacy but it's too long her for a HN username.
|
| *In the military this is considered objectively true, and
| drawing dicks on things is one of humanity's oldest memes.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's a great idea, but unless they start by making it a real and
| popular email service first, it will be blocked by most websites
| very soon.
| neon_electro wrote:
| We'll see! It's already my primary email for a few core
| services :) (I say primary because the others are still there
| as backup)
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Unfortunatly you have one try for the domain.
|
| I already use spamgourmet (a old great free service in the
| same features) and despite the fact it has several very
| different domains, it's rejected sometimes.
|
| Something as high profile as ddg will be flagged very
| quickly.
|
| The only one that can get away with it is gmail with the "+"
| aliases, because nobody can afford to reject it.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Opening in Firefox on Android:
|
| > Email Protection is not available in this browser
|
| > Email Protection is also available on desktop with the
| DuckDuckGo app for Mac (beta), as well as DuckDuckGo extensions
| for Firefox, Chrome, Brave, and Edge.
|
| What, I need to install a piece of software to my computer or an
| extension to my browser to use a service? That's invasive and,
| without a very good explanation (that is nowhere to be seen on
| that page), massively hurts my trust in the company.
| yegg wrote:
| The original link was never meant to be linked to directly --
| and has now been replaced with the announcement post.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Okay, but that's not an explanation.
|
| > That said, we may indeed offer sign up outside the
| app/extension, but right now as a forwarding service, we are
| very sensitive to abuse of the system and so limiting it a
| bit helps to ensure we are on top of any abuse that doesn't
| bring down the whole system.
|
| This is a satisfactory explanation. But it's neither on the
| signup page, nor on the announcement page.
|
| ... and it's still really easy to accuse you of just trying
| to get some app installs - which would be fine _if you
| admitted it_.
| Turpen wrote:
| nine_k wrote:
| Another (useful) service that could have been run on client, and
| not have to allow access to the contents of my email to an
| unrelated company.
|
| Sadly, the current situation with mobile and desktop software
| makes it much easier to run this in a datacenter. Access to my
| email's content, and especially binding my identity on many web
| sites to the duck.com domain, likely is worth something, too.
| megous wrote:
| "To protect your privacy send emails via yet another additional
| third party you have no control over."
|
| Makes no sense, despite the offered message content sanitization
| that should be best done in the MUA.
| firloop wrote:
| This is cool - but I feel like to do this well you need to co-
| mingle valid and masked emails on the same domain. Otherwise
| services can and will prevent folks from signing up with
| @duck.com emails.
|
| Apple does this well with their email masking service; all emails
| have an @icloud.com domain, the same as primary emails. A service
| can't simply block @icloud.com without blocking millions of
| primary/default addresses.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i don't know man.... this sounds yet another service to subscribe
| to for what benefit?
|
| i have been selfhosting on racknerd for like last 2 years and
| beyond the first month, i have been pretty much put it on auto
| mode.
|
| i use mailinabox so i get to use roundcube and it has a banner
|
| "To protect your privacy remote resources have been blocked."
|
| this is by default for all links and images unless i explicitly
| allow someone so isn't that the same thing?
| BobMit wrote:
| Does it work without installing the extension?
| therealmarv wrote:
| There is absolutely NO reason to use only an extension or app for
| that. I don't trust extensions.
|
| OSS alternative with freemium/paid subscription model (but
| without email tracker removal unfortunately)
|
| https://anonaddy.com
| tao_oat wrote:
| I'm working on a similar project: https://shroud.email/
|
| It doesn't yet have all the same features as
| SimpleLogin/AnonAddy, but unlike them it does remove email
| trackers.
| 3np wrote:
| There is also SimpleLogin.
|
| https://simplelogin.io/
|
| https://github.com/simple-login/app
|
| AA and SL do look like the two more solid options compared to
| anything else I've seen so far.
| jaden wrote:
| SimpleLogin was recently acquired by Proton [1]. I'm hoping
| nothing changes, but you never know.
|
| [1] https://simplelogin.io/blog/simplelogin-join-proton/
| sha-3 wrote:
| SimpleLogin was bought by Proton[0], so if you have a Proton
| Unlimited, Business or Visionary plan, you'll get SimpleLogin
| premium for free.
|
| [0]: https://proton.me/news/proton-and-simplelogin-join-
| forces
| Vinnl wrote:
| Coincidentally we just this week added tracker removal to
| https://relay.firefox.com/ (needs to be explicitly enabled due
| to the risk of breakage).
|
| I should note though, that while it is open source (and
| freemium), it's reliant on quite some infra that makes it
| pretty much impossible to self-host, if that's something you're
| looking to do.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| benbristow wrote:
| It's a good service and I've used it a few times, but the
| requirement to use an extension is a bit of a pain point.
|
| Especially as the extension seems to try and install some adblock
| style stuff which I already use ublock for and overwrites the
| default search engine with no option to disable it. Every time I
| need to generate a new email I need to re-enable the extension,
| copy the email address and then disable the extension again. Not
| nice UX.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I could also generate an alias from the web UI (though maybe
| only with the extension installed?).
| kjoedion wrote:
| Will this allow DDG to place some of my emails at the bottom of
| my inbox if they consider it Russian disinformation?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| My grandad is still not convinced. What the absolute fuck does
| that all mean?
| huangc10 wrote:
| Came here for dmail, a gmail competitor. Semi disappointed but
| still liking this security feature though.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Agreed. I'd really like a middle ground between proton and
| gmail. Something that's easy enough to set up and won't
| actively spy on me.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >won't actively spy on me.
|
| Go on.....
| googlryas wrote:
| I'm not installing a brand new web browser, or a browser
| extension, in order to use an email forwarding service.
| [deleted]
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| gerash wrote:
| It seems like DuckDuckGo's raison d'etre is being "not Google".
| Personally, I don't care about these "evil tracking" where my
| screen size and user agent might get logged through some
| telemetry.
|
| What I'd pay for in an email client is a way for it to help me
| sort through the giant stream of stuff I constantly receive.
|
| For example when I buy something online I get 4 different email
| threads in Gmail: 1. order confirmation 2.it was shipped 3.it's
| arrived 4.fill up this survey
|
| I want my email client to cluster all those into one. Basically
| sift through my crap and summarize what's important and delete
| the unimportant stuff because I hate having to constantly keeping
| my inbox tidy.
| laundermaf wrote:
| The pushback on the extension requirement is insane. Feels like
| you could have been advertised this as a "DDG App" feature and
| maybe that would have saved you a bit.
|
| As a Safari and Hide My Email user I completely welcome this
| service. If anything, it pushes more companies to do the same.
| luhn wrote:
| Unfortunately, this seems to require the "DuckDuckGo Privacy
| Essentials" extension to use it in your browser, which for Chrome
| at least requires permission to "Read and change all your data on
| all websites." It's not clear to me why an extension is necessary
| at all, let alone an extension that much more broad than just
| email and requires such extensive permissions.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/duckduckgo-privacy...
| yegg wrote:
| Addressed in other comment (and comments below it) on this
| thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32597463
| cguess wrote:
| Cool, but no Safari support?
| laundermaf wrote:
| Safari extensions are a PITA compared to the others. However
| considering that they already have apps in the store, I assume
| they will start including the extension at some point.
| pluc wrote:
| > Email Protection requires the DuckDuckGo extension in this
| browser.
|
| well, that's cool I guess
| anonu wrote:
| It doesnt really need an extension... dark pattern
| pluc wrote:
| You do if you want to autocomplete your email address in
| fields I guess, but I agree it isn't a very good reason for
| an extension. It's one of those convenience extension that,
| would it be made by any other company, I'd be very suspicious
| of.
| [deleted]
| mxuribe wrote:
| The concept is great, and compared to other companies, i trust
| duckduckgo more...but, there still a for-profit company (nothing
| wrong with that)...so how will they sustain this? Maybe i'm not
| so smart with funding models, but i would feel better if there
| was some sort of pricing...to make me feel like as a user i'm not
| the product...am i paranoid for being suspicious?
| arealaccount wrote:
| It seems like the browser extension quietly changes your browsers
| default search engine to DuckDuckGo.
|
| Edit - I use DDG on several devices, but happen to not use it on
| the one where I installed this extension.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| If you are interested in the "unlimited unique private email
| addresses" functionality, also take a look at these other
| services:
|
| https://33mail.com/
|
| https://anonaddy.com/
|
| https://burnermail.io/
|
| https://relay.firefox.com/
|
| https://simplelogin.io/
|
| These all support custom domains, except for Firefox Relay, which
| only supports a custom subdomain.
| saimiam wrote:
| I'm building https://pretzelbox.cc which is like mailinator for
| your own domain. While it doesn't generate email addresses for
| you, since it's a domain inbox, you can use whatever
| string@you-domain.com to make it work.
|
| It's getting a bit of traction even with the rubbish website
| :).
| gkoberger wrote:
| For people who aren't sure what this does:
| https://spreadprivacy.com/protect-your-inbox-with-duckduckgo...
|
| EDIT: The site has been updated to point to this!
| mwilliaams wrote:
| Email tracking is just done through image downloads right? So
| if images are blocked by default then tracking isn't possible?
| Image blocking is easy enough to do.
| gregmac wrote:
| Is there any tracking other than images? I do "Block all
| images" in email anyway, would I gain anything (in terms of
| tracking protection) from this?
| ctrlmeta wrote:
| I don't understand why it needs me to install a browser
| extension. That's a very weird requirement to sign up for an
| email address? Could someone explain why an extension is needed
| or why it was designed like this?
| websap wrote:
| I need to install a browser extension to use an email forwarding
| service? What information could DDG read from my emails when
| forwarding?
|
| This blogpost does a REALLY POOR job to explain what, why and how
| to use this. Hope someone can clean this up and simplify what
| this service does.
| m1117 wrote:
| tt_dev wrote:
| whats the catch?
| ArrayBoundCheck wrote:
| The fact that this exist shows open source is bad. We should have
| had an alternative to email by now
| pluc wrote:
| Feels like it tries to solve the same problems as Mozilla Relay
| [1] (they call it Firefox Relay, but the addresses are
| @mozmail.com soooo) except Mozilla lets you attribute specific
| aliases for things.
|
| 1 https://relay.firefox.com/
| laundermaf wrote:
| Good to see more like it, but having only 5 addresses for free
| feels like DOA now. Even during the waitlist they didn't
| increase the number, kinda shameful.
| cmurf wrote:
| Does it pass "the mom test"? The people who need this kind of
| protection aren't as much HNers, but the friends and family of
| HNers.
| [deleted]
| yonrg wrote:
| The idea of on-demand addresses is great. I operate my mail
| server since 2006 now and implemented such feature straight away.
| I started to never use the same mail address again. name-
| something@domain just forwards to the inbox of name. After a time
| I lost track about all the addresses I "generated".
|
| But one thing was nice, I registered my mail with a hotline agent
| via phone. I told them my mail is name-$YOURCOMPANYNAME@domain.
| They replied, oh you are a colleague, then I can give you
| discount :)
| saimiam wrote:
| How did you end up resolving the issue with too many generated
| emails addresses? I built and use my own domain inbox which
| buckets emails by email addresses (https://PretzelBox.cc) but
| more and more, I find myself using just one or two email
| addresses.
| raybb wrote:
| I wonder how the privacy aspects of this compare to Firefox
| Relay?
|
| Having used Firefox Relay a bit, I'm pretty happy with it but the
| free tier is relatively limited. DDG email seems to allow
| unlimited addresses but after a quick look it's not obvious that
| you can turn them off if an account is getting too much spam.
|
| https://relay.firefox.com/
| aaaddaaaaa1112 wrote:
| smotched wrote:
| I've completely switched to brave search for browsing, I can
| never trust DDG again.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Would be good to have context here... not that Brave hasn't had
| its own share of controversies.
| melony wrote:
| Brave's controversies are mostly related to its monetisation,
| not censorship. They are not the same.
| yegg wrote:
| I'm the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo. We are not (and never
| were) censoring results. I realize I caused the
| misunderstanding due to own my unfortunate phrasing in a tweet,
| and since then, how our news results rankings work has been
| highly misinterpreted.
|
| We (DuckDuckGo) subsequently made a help page to explain it in
| detail: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/results/ne... Tl;dr: we don't censor, we don't move
| things so far down that they are effectively censored, we don't
| evaluate individual stories or narratives for "truth", and we
| don't rank based on any political agenda or opinions. This is
| just a summary though so would read the help page for details.
|
| I also put out a clarification thread about misconceptions that
| included this topic amongst others (like the fact that no,
| we're not owned by Google), but the help page referenced above
| is the best and most thorough explanation of our news rankings.
| https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1515635886855233537
| smotched wrote:
| Its not the results I'm worried about with DDG, after all you
| just use bing behind the scenes although I think there's some
| shenanigans there too.
|
| It's your deep financial ties to Microsoft that's worrying.
| And it seems you're willing to turn your back on
| privacy/tracking for your friends when Microsoft asks.
|
| https://twitter.com/shivan_kaul/status/1528879590772338689
| yegg wrote:
| The tweet you referenced is no longer the case. See
| https://spreadprivacy.com/more-privacy-and-transparency/.
| We've also since open sourced our web tracker block list
| (all our apps and extensions were already open sourced) and
| put out a help page detailing how all our web tracking
| protections work across platforms:
| https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/privacy/we...
|
| As for our private search engine, it is in actually way
| more than Bing at this point. We have approximately a
| millions lines of search code at this point, many tens of
| millions of dollars invested in them and a staff of about
| 200.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Hello 'yegg'. What's your stake in all this? Who are you?
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| Hello "incitydreams", you first.
| yegg wrote:
| I am the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Who yegg is is well known on HN, but you yourself are
| anonymous so it's a bit weird to see this exchange. Maybe
| (1) click on the name of the person before asking them who
| they are and (2) flesh out your profile to return the
| favor?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
| thedorkknight wrote:
| What happened?
| djanogo wrote:
| They started censoring websites based on "political fake
| news" filter list supplied by MSM.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| > based on "political fake news" filter list supplied by
| MSM
|
| Can you provide a citation for this?
| behnamoh wrote:
| Search HN, it was a big buzz recently.
| rvz wrote:
| DuckDuckGo's search manipulation is just no different to
| Google's since essentially they are using Microsoft
| Bing's search results. [0] So the manipulation, down-
| ranking and censoring of search results was inevitable
| with tons of evidence of this: [1][2][3][4]
|
| "At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates
| that down-rank sites associated with Russian
| disinformation.": [1]
|
| At this point, DDG is a front for Microsoft using
| 'privacy' buzzwords. Might as well use Brave Search then.
|
| [0] https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/results/so...
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318
|
| [2] https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-
| speech-p...
|
| [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/hx5dn5/p
| roof_du...
|
| [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635
| codeecan wrote:
| > Like so many others I am sickened by Russia's invasion
| of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it
| continues to create. #StandWithUkraine
|
| At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that
| _down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation_.
|
| https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318
|
| -----
|
| > In addition to down-ranking sites associated with
| disinformation, we also often place news modules and
| information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results
| (where they are seen and clicked the most) to _highlight
| quality information for rapidly unfolding topics_.
|
| https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501717193855283201
|
| ----
|
| It should be obvious why this is problematic ...
| yegg wrote:
| FYI - I'm the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo and responded
| to this in another comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32597340.
| ipaddr wrote:
| https://mashable.com/article/duckduckgo-search-engine-
| russia...
|
| Or search google yourself to get a broader picture.
| Kye wrote:
| Some people are upset about a company curating the database
| it uses to return results.
| TopGreg wrote:
| [deleted]
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| During the Russia / Ukraine conflict the Duck Duck Go founder
| decided to filter out any results which are deemed as Russian
| misinformation. Censorship of any kind, is always still in
| the end, censorship.
|
| This is the gist of what everyone is upset about, of those
| who are upset. The entire point of DDG was that the search
| results were never to be tampered with for personalization
| reasons, censoring results due to political reasons seems to
| be a slippery slope.
| brnt wrote:
| Censorship is always censorship, yes, and naivite is always
| naivite. Meet the tolerance paradox!
|
| Also, search engines have _as their sole purpose_ sorting
| their list of links by some measure of quality. Removing
| useless nonsense is what we go there for.
| pwinnski wrote:
| "The entire point of Company was ABC, doing 867 seems to be
| a slippery slope." Huh?
|
| I don't see how capturing personal information from users
| for any reason has anything whatsoever to do with omitting
| perceived misinformation from _all_ users across the board.
| One can agree or disagree with the decision, but they are
| two entirely different issues in entirely different areas,
| and one is in no way a "slippery slope" toward the other.
| drstewart wrote:
| I can't think of a situation where I'd want to use this - if I
| don't trust the provider, I'm using a throwaway email like
| mailinator.com. Curious to hear about what use cases this would
| fall into?
| saimiam wrote:
| If you want to take it to next level after mailinator.com, I'm
| building https://pretzelbox.cc - an inbox for your domain. Use
| whatever string@your-domain.com and we'll forward emails to
| your linked email account.
| baobob wrote:
| You have to install a browser extension to use email? Who had
| this bright idea?
| TekMol wrote:
| Prompting the user to install a browser extension to use an email
| forwarder looks like a dark pattern to me.
|
| This lowers my trust in DDG.
|
| It's the same approach all companies use, once they grow.
| "Everyone is telling you they are the good guys, but they are
| throwing invasive technology at you! Fight back! ... by
| installing our invasive technology! Trust us, we are the good
| guys!"
| laundermaf wrote:
| I really don't see the issue here. It's completely
| understandable that DDG would not want to offer an easy API for
| this. This is likely seen as a "DDG app" feature _exactly_ like
| Safari's Hide My Email and like every browser's password
| manager.
|
| They _could_ offer an external UI, but this is a beta and DDG
| is not an ISP. If you want email forwarding, you already have
| plenty of choices -- and catch-all addresses and plus signs.
| tradertef wrote:
| Yep. The moment I saw the "extension" requirement, I stopped.
| yegg wrote:
| We offer an all-in-one privacy app. The extension/app generates
| the addresses and autofills them into email forms, and so you
| need the extension/app for those key parts of the
| functionality. Once signed up you can use it somewhat though
| without the extension/app by giving out your personal duck
| address directly, and trackers will be stripped from messages
| sent to it and then forwarded to your regular inbox.
|
| That said, we may indeed offer sign up outside the
| app/extension, but right now as a forwarding service, we are
| very sensitive to abuse of the system and so limiting it a bit
| helps to ensure we are on top of any abuse that doesn't bring
| down the whole system.
| Agrue8u wrote:
| But the app changes my default search page and new tab home
| page without my permission. I installed the app to get my
| duck email address then immediately disabled it.
| yegg wrote:
| I'm not sure which "app" you are referring to in this case,
| but generally private search is a key part of being private
| online. In every browser but Chrome, you can, however,
| subsequently change the search engine if you want. It's not
| our fault you can't do it in Chrome -- that is their
| restriction.
| TekMol wrote:
| I would not install an extension to give me a generated
| address. I would expect your website to give it to me.
|
| Putting generated addresses into forms... I would do that
| manually.
|
| If I _really_ would do that multiple times a day (But who
| signs up for services so often?) I would use a bookmarklet
| for it.
|
| Bookmarklets are way less intrusive than extensions. And have
| other usability advantages. I can nicely put them into my
| bookmarks for example.
| yegg wrote:
| As said, we may support this in the future. We did a lot of
| testing and found unequivocally that most people would
| prefer to have generated addresses automatically available
| in context within email fields when they use signup forms
| vs. having to go back to another website to get them (which
| most wouldn't actually do).
| TekMol wrote:
| I agree with you in so far, that you would probably have
| 1000 times less users if you would cater to people like
| me.
|
| But it still feels wrong to me. Instead of giving company
| A their email, you are suggesting people give company B
| full access to all their browsing data. The "Trust us we
| are the good guys" approach just does not click with me.
| yegg wrote:
| Understood, though just to be clear, email field
| identification happens client side, so we don't get your
| browsing history. More fundamentally though, we make a
| browser, and our privacy policy is to never create search
| or browsing histories.
| TekMol wrote:
| I said you get _access_ to peoples browsing data. Your
| extension can access everything on every page people
| visit. And can send that data eveywhere.
|
| That you promise to behave well does not change that. It
| is the "Trust us" argument again. If we could trust
| companies, we could give them our real emails.
| pwinnski wrote:
| > If we could trust companies, we could give them our
| real emails.
|
| I'm assuming you realize that there is more than one
| company, and that one can trust different companies to
| different extents. I trust DDG more than I trust most
| other companies. I trust DDG more than I trust Amazon,
| and I've given Amazon my email--a decision I sometimes
| regret!
| 0xChain wrote:
| sha-3 wrote:
| Could you, if it's possible, at least remove the full
| browsing data permission on the extension?
| yegg wrote:
| That is required to provide all our various web tracking
| protections: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/privacy/we...
| akomtu wrote:
| So you offer a privacy app that needs to see everything I'm
| doing online, just like a VPN, but at the html level. And
| that "html vpn" is free, funded by god knows who. I wouldn't
| use it, but I admit this might be a valid business idea. I'll
| also add that this "vpn" app trades a bit of DDG's reputation
| for attention.
| yegg wrote:
| No, unlike a VPN, our web tracker blocking all happens on
| your device. See our help page for details:
| https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/privacy/we.... We are are funded through private
| search ads.
| Terretta wrote:
| The Waitlist suggested access to this was tied to device
| identifier.
|
| When I tried today I was not waitlisted, but I also wasn't
| challenged to identify myself that I saw. I created my
| forwarder. I'm puzzled how, if this is connected to my device
| ID in some way, I will be able to access it on my next
| device.
| yegg wrote:
| It is not connected to your device id. The waitlist worked
| on your device by storing a local token, and we never had
| your device id. On other devices/browsers you will need to
| authenticate via an email code/link forwarded through the
| service.
| jrexilius wrote:
| Dear DuckDuckGo,
|
| Please let me pay for this service. It looks worth having and: 1)
| I'd like to know that it is funded by users, rather than
| advertisers and thus can resist privacy invasion presuures. 2)
| I'd like to have some basis for belief that it will be around
| longer than it takes the VC money to run out, (or the marketing
| budget, or whatever non-sustainable pot it comes from).
| snthd wrote:
| Firefox relay premium will take your money (currently $1 a
| month).
|
| https://relay.firefox.com/premium/
| aorth wrote:
| I pay for this and use it regularly. It's awesome!
| C4K3 wrote:
| https://sneakemail.com/ is another one that's been around for a
| long time.
| behnamoh wrote:
| " Email Protection is not available in this browser.
|
| Open this page in the DuckDuckGo app to continue."
|
| Reminds me of Reddit shenanigans...
| [deleted]
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| How much would you pay? I've moved to posteo and I can't think
| of paying more than 1EUR/month for email. I never considered
| Protonmail because 4EUR/month is what i consider way too much
| for email. My root server is 6EUR/month (atom/4gb/1tb/100mbit).
| rnotaro wrote:
| I personally pay 10$ a month for GSuite basically to handle
| the mail of my personal domain name. Is it worth it? I'm not
| sure yet but I had way to much issues with email not
| delivered in the past (blacklisted IP ranges, reputation,
| etc.) when I had my own mail server.
|
| I prefer paying 10$ a month and forget about mail server
| issues and wondering if my mail is going to the spam folder..
| justusthane wrote:
| To me email is one of the most worthwhile services to pay for
| --it is the backbone of your digital identity after all.
|
| That being said, there's probably not much need to pay more
| than $5/mo. I'm very happy with Fastmail at $60/yr.
| jrexilius wrote:
| For a mail relay service, I'd probably pay $24-$36/yr. I
| happily pay Proton $50/yr for quality email service. $12/yr
| would be a no-brainer.
| unboxingelf wrote:
| Fastmail is paid and has this feature.
| therealmarv wrote:
| Just go to https://anonaddy.com (it just cannot filter out
| trackers in messages)
| js2 wrote:
| In the meantime, you can pay either Apple or Fastmail for this
| feature as part of their larger product offerings. Maybe there
| are other paid services which offer this as a feature. These
| are just the ones I'm aware of.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I work at Mozilla, and we've got https://relay.firefox.com/
| archb wrote:
| I have read the FAQs page but I am not seeing an answer to
| a question just yet: can one lock the 0.99 USD limited time
| discount forever?
| [deleted]
| yegg wrote:
| DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 through private
| search ads, and our company is not controlled or beholden to
| venture capital (or VC or other money).
|
| Our product vision is an "easy button" for privacy, an all-in-
| one privacy app. Email protection is part of that, along with
| search, browsing, etc. Put another way, we see email protection
| as part of our core product, and within our app we autofill
| duck addresses in email forms.
|
| We will take your comment into consideration, though we prefer
| free services where possible so more people can get privacy
| protection, which is in line with our mission. This service
| comes with it a set of privacy guarantees here:
| https://duckduckgo.com/email/privacy-guarantees and we will not
| be putting ads on it.
| snihalani wrote:
| Can you build an email hosting service on par with Gmail? I'd
| really like to get out of being on Google
| [deleted]
| crocbuzz wrote:
| Have you tried FastMail? Probably the closest thing to a G
| Suite/Workspace alternative that doesn't have ties to "Big
| Tech".
| pwinnski wrote:
| +1 for Fastmail.
| lolinder wrote:
| This answers the VC money fear, but not everything else OP
| brought up.
|
| If a product is subsidized by a company's other products,
| it's hard for me to believe it'll be around forever. For an
| email product, that's a huge problem, because I use my
| address in hundreds of contexts that take a _long_ time to
| identify and migrate, much longer than a typical company 's
| sunsetting notice.
|
| EDIT: The parent comment was edited to note that they
| perceive DDG Email as part of the core product, not a
| separate product. That's helpful to know, but I'm still
| skeptical that that's sustainable in the long term. This
| would not be the first time a _feature_ was cut from a
| product because it was too expensive to maintain. I 'll be
| waiting to see their unified privacy solution really take off
| before I place any bets on this feature.
| [deleted]
| jsnell wrote:
| The business case seems pretty obvious: They're using this
| as a way of getting people to install a browser extension /
| app, and changing their default search engine. A search
| user is valuable, which makes customer acquisition
| expensive. This also makes their extension way more sticky.
|
| Just because you're a product doesn't mean the service is
| not sustainable. It should be very easy for them to figure
| out whether the feature is profitable or not compared to
| other acquisition methods.
| karlzt wrote:
| He/she probably meant: keep it free with a donate button.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| dwighttk wrote:
| yegg is the ceo and founder of Duck Duck Go
| jacquesm wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=yegg
| ddg01 wrote:
| TopGreg wrote:
| vinaypai wrote:
| DDG has regularly raised money from VCs including a Series D
| about a year ago.
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/duck-duck-
| go/company...
| macNchz wrote:
| I can't speak for their circumstances, but I'd assume a VC-
| backed company describing themselves as "not beholden" to
| VCs means they're default alive without additional
| fundraising, and that they haven't given over majority
| control of the board to their investors.
| Alupis wrote:
| yegg wrote:
| We are not (and never were) censoring results. I realize I
| caused the misunderstanding due to own my unfortunate
| phrasing in a tweet, and since then, how our news results
| rankings work has been highly misinterpreted.
|
| We (DuckDuckGo) subsequently made a help page to explain it
| in detail: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/results/ne.... Tl;dr: we don't censor, we don't move
| things so far down that they are effectively censored, we
| don't evaluate individual stories or narratives for "truth",
| and we don't rank based on any political agenda or opinions.
| This is just a summary though so would read the help page for
| details.
|
| I also put out a clarification thread about various
| misconceptions that included this topic amongst others (like
| the fact that no, we're not owned by Google), but the help
| page referenced above is the best and most thorough
| explanation of our news rankings.
| https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1515635886855233537
| Alupis wrote:
| I'm sorry, but this does not seem to counter your initial
| tweet at all. Your first tweet said, and I quote, "At
| DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that
| down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation."
|
| This is censorship, since DDG is now deciding what is
| considered "Disinformation".
|
| Your clarification thread does not state DDG is not down-
| ranking these sites based on what DDG feels is
| "disinformation". It merely asserts DDG is not purging
| results - these are two very different things.
|
| Just to be clear, I too support Ukraine, and am aghast at
| the deliberately misleading information ("disinformation")
| coming out of the Russian War Machine. However, as I
| previously wrote, the truth needs no defense. Hiding away
| things we don't like doesn't make them go away, it just
| makes them go underground. We need this information freely
| available so it can be discussed and disproven out in the
| open.
|
| If users wanted curated search results, they might as well
| use Google or Bing...
|
| Lastly, to repeat, Privacy + Censorship (of any kind) do
| not go together. This was quite a large misstep for DDG,
| and has burned a lot of trust.
| yegg wrote:
| Not sure if you read the whole thread as it says
| explicitly "We are not ranking based on any political
| agenda or my (or anyone else's) personal political
| opinions. We are also not assessing any individual news
| stories."
|
| That said, the help page I referenced is the most
| detailed explanation of how our news rankings work:
| https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/results/ne....
|
| To be clear, that means we do not have a definition of
| "disinformation". I'm to blame for tweeting something
| that was highly ambiguous but we were never actually
| doing what we've been accused of doing.
| rpdillon wrote:
| They rank based on relevancy. Domains that are found
| misleading readers often are less relevant than domains
| that are misleading readers less often. That's it. All
| search engines have to make these calls all the time, and
| I see no viable alternative approach that would be
| better. There is no 'natural' ordering of the web...it's
| all judgment. If you think DDG's results are less
| relevant than those you get elsewhere, use the better
| engine!
| 735409264082 wrote:
| I think you lost all credibility when you made that tweet.
| If you want to regain it, you should be completely
| transparent about which sites you have taken any specific
| ranking action regarding, and why. This should be
| relatively easy to do, as you say you take action very
| rarely.
| groffee wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post like this to HN, regardless of what
| someone else did or you feel they did. Regardless of what
| you do or don't owe them, you owe this community better
| if you're participating in it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| blakesley wrote:
| [Original comment removed by author 'cuz it's now moot]
|
| Edit: My bad, I missed a legit link in parent comment. That
| said, that link should have been front & center. (Edit 2:
| it now is. Good on you!)
| yegg wrote:
| The help page referenced is only about this topic and
| provides the most thorough and up to date explanation of
| how our news rankings work:
| https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/results/ne...
| masterof0 wrote:
| @yegg Even if you don't agree with one side, you can't
| consider the side to be "spam", "disinformation" or
| "propaganda" and hope people will just be OK with that.
| What is spam to you, is useful information for somebody
| else, some people love what Tucker Carlson have to say,
| others prefer Brian Stelter. That's why freedom of speech
| exists[1]. I think the right approach to down ranking is
| having a banner with a link with undeniable proof of what
| the article says is wrong, which is very hard to do, I get
| it. Otherwise, is preferential down ranking, and whatever
| you argue on Twitter won't change the minds of people. I
| too have been using DDG from the beginning, and I'm
| grateful more private alternative to Google exists, I just
| hate censoring as much as privacy violating businesses.
|
| 1- https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-
| neo-naz...
| yegg wrote:
| I think you may have misinterpreted how this works. We do
| not do any page or story or narrative level assessment or
| fact checking at all, or any fact checking for that
| matter.
| [deleted]
| TopGreg wrote:
| ukd1 wrote:
| And this is why I switched to kagi.com. Also, helps the search
| results are better.
| EGreg wrote:
| I don't understand why people think the converse of "if you are
| not the customer, you're the product" is true.
|
| Contrapositive yes, converse no. Companies could still make
| money from both sides of a market. Look at the lack of net
| neutrality. Look also at how ISPs used to be able to sell your
| data, despite you paying them !
| vinaypai wrote:
| This.
|
| This is also the reason I'm not particularly excited about DDG
| in general. They have exactly the same business model as
| Google, so there is no reason for me to feel confident they
| won't follow the same trajectory as Google.
| ipaddr wrote:
| But they don't. Google is much bigger than search from an
| office competitor to a cloud provider to a phone software
| vendor. DDG will not become google. Something with a bigger
| reach like tiktok might.
|
| Being funded by search ads was never an issue with google and
| privacy until they switch from contextual ads and morphed
| into personal ads.
|
| DDG winning search on bing search isn't the same trajectory.
| At best lycos like would be the most likely trajectory.
| vinaypai wrote:
| Google in 1999 was an upstart search provider promising a
| clean, minimal, user-focused ad-supported search experience
| as an alternative to entrenched search engines like Lycos,
| Altavista, Yahoo.
|
| DuckDuckGo in 2022 is an upstart search provider promising
| a clean, minimal, user-focused ad-supported search
| experience as an alternative to entrenched search engines
| like Google.
|
| I'm old enough to remember when Google was the new and
| exciting thing (just give it a try and ignore the stupid-
| sounding name!). For the longest time there wasn't even
| such a thing as a Google account, it just saved preferences
| like safe-search locally using cookies, and ads were just a
| small distinctly colored text bar above the organic search
| results, directly related to your search keywords.
| Terretta wrote:
| Consider paying for kagi.com.
| ukd1 wrote:
| As a paying subscriber, I 2nd this - it's great.
| dwighttk wrote:
| True.
|
| Not sure how paying for this service makes it any less
| likely that DDG will flip a switch to make that targeted
| advertising money though. That temptation will exist
| either with a paid service or a non targeted ad supported
| service.
| codegladiator wrote:
| What search engine do you use ( I am assuming its not
| google ) ?
| yojo wrote:
| The original Google ads were actually to the side - no
| way of confusing them with organic listings. Ads above
| results weren't rolled out until 2007ish. Internally
| there was a lot of debate as to whether this might be
| confusing to users/evil, so the decision was to only show
| ads above results on queries that appeared to be high
| commercial intent. RIP old Google
| colordrops wrote:
| As long as ads are their core revenue stream, there is a
| risk of compromising users. If you aren't paying for hte
| product, you aren't the customer, as the old saying goes,
| and no superficial rationale for why they are "different"
| will change this.
| jacooper wrote:
| There is https://simplelogin.io and https://anonnaddy.com
|
| Which support custom domain and more features, and not locked
| to a specific browser.
|
| Both open source and self-hostable, SL is by Proton(Mail).
| oofdere wrote:
| DDG email protection isn't locked to a single browser, I've
| been using it on Chrome/ium and Firefox for around a year
| now.
| archb wrote:
| Same, it is not available on Safari though.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Interesting. Just noticed that DDG have removed a graph with
| traffic from their stats page [1]. I wonder if it is because the
| daily average stopped growing like it used to...
|
| [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic
| nashashmi wrote:
| What is DDG getting out of this "free" service?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| How old are you? Depening on location/ age/ combining the two,
| the easy answer is "more than you could ever believe". Why?
| Because it's not at all clear, and you had to ask that
| question.
|
| Just waiting for the 'apology' in 3..2...
| srg0 wrote:
| I'm using duck.com, Hide My Email and Firefox Relay. All work
| fine, but I think Firefox Relay has better UI to manage aliases:
| it has tags and can block promotional emails. And I like that
| it's a paid service.
| jcadam wrote:
| DDG? Nah, I'll stick with Startmail (https://startmail.com) -
| which is a paid service - until they do something to lose my
| trust.
| sparrc wrote:
| Anyone have a writeup that doesn't require the browser extension?
| bertman wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32596459
| blitzo wrote:
| Can't launch Brave on incognito mode (Target path --incognito)
| after installing the extension.
| siproprio wrote:
| Very cool, and even replying works!
| brbot wrote:
| Will DDG ever drop Bing index (yes, I've heard of mythical DDG
| crawler)? In current form, calling DDG a search engine is an
| overstatement, it's more like a Bing proxy. By a nature, what was
| censored in Bing is censored on DDG.
| pierrebeaucamp wrote:
| > Email Protection is not available in this browser.
|
| I'm surprised to see that Safari is not supported.
| laundermaf wrote:
| Safari already has Hide My Email, assuming you're already
| laying $60/year for iCloud.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Fastmail also has the feature of being able to generate throwaway
| email addresses for sign-ups and it doesn't require installation
| of any extension - they call it masked email in the settings[0].
| Pretty happy with it.
|
| https://www.fastmail.com/settings/masked
| CA0DA wrote:
| Won't lots of services just start blocking *@duck.com email
| addresses now?
| megapatch wrote:
| Then you don't use that service.
| blibble wrote:
| most likely
|
| the only way the fastmail one works is there's paying customers
| on that domain (and a lot of them)
| saimiam wrote:
| If that happens, check out https://PretzelBox.cc (FD - my
| product) and get *@your-domain.com.
|
| They can't block all domains other than gmail and outlook, can
| they?
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