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Qwant or DuckDuckGo: Which Search Engine is More Private?


Qwant and DuckDuckGo are two privately-focused search engines that guarantee not to track your activities. Their ability to assist you in avoiding the privacy-invading methods that are all too prevalent among big search engines is one of the key components of their appeal. However, in search engine businesses, it is easy to promise one thing but instead do whichever one thing brings the most profit to the organization. 

Here, we are comparing DuckDuckGo with Qwant to discover which search engine is better at safeguarding its users' privacy beyond the marketing claims. 

Data Collection 

Any search engine company's efforts to collect data is a highly risky task. There is a very blurry line between the quantity of data that is required and the amount that is excessive. Once a search engine service crosses this blurry line, one can infer that the notion of privacy is simply abandoned. 

IP address, device type, device platform, search history, and links clicked on results pages are some of the instances of data collected by major search engine companies. 

However, they do not necessarily need to collect all that data, compromising users’ privacy. So, what kind of data do Qwant and DuckDuckGo collect on their users? 

Data Collected by Qwant 

The Qwant search engine service, according to Qwant, aims to gather as little information as possible. While this is partially accurate, it still gathers some information that could violate your privacy, such as your IP address, search phrases, preferred languages, and news trend data. The privacy of the user is heavily prioritized in the data processing methods used by Qwant. To be fair, they made a significant effort. 

Qwant's weakness is that it largely depends on outside services, some of whose privacy policies may not always protect the privacy of users. Qwant, for instance, relies on Microsoft to conduct ad services for revenue purposes. For this, it needs to collect and share the IP addresses and search terms of its users with Microsoft. Some of us may be aware that Microsoft is not exactly a privacy pioneer. 

However, Qwant asserts that it does not transmit search terms and IP addresses together. Instead, to make it difficult for the parties concerned to link search phrases to IP addresses, search terms, and IP addresses are transmitted differently utilizing several services. 

In other words, they hinder the ability of outside services to create a profile of you. However, some contend that the sheer fact that Qwant gathers this data constitutes a potential privacy breach. 

Data Collected in DuckDuckGo 

In ideal terms, the right amount of data collected is ‘no personal data at all.’ Your IP address, cookies, search terms, or any other personally identifiable data are never collected by DuckDuckGo. Every time you use the DuckDuckGo search engine, you are in fact using it as an entirely new user. There is no way for DuckDuckGo to determine if you have been there previously. 

Most of the data generated as a result of your interaction with the DuckDuckGo is destroyed once you exit the search engine. This is part of the reason why DuckDuckGo does not have a clear idea of just how many people use its search engine. 

Clearly, in terms of data collection and sharing their user data with a third party, one can conclude that DuckDuckGo is the most privacy compliant in comparison with Qwant. 

Search Leakage 

Search leakage occurs when a search engine fails to properly delete or anonymize data that can be given to a third party when you click on a link on search result pages. Your search history, browser history, and in some situations, cookies are a few examples of data that might be compromised. 

In order to prevent search leaks, both DuckDuckGo and Qwant have implemented a number of precautionary measures, including, but not limited to the encryption of your data. 

However, a challenging privacy problem for both search engines is that they store your search terms in the URL of their result pages. While it does not appear to be a privacy issue, it is. Both DuckDuckGo and Qwant unintentionally reveal your search history to the browser of your choice by keeping your search keywords in their URL parameters. 

This implies that despite your best efforts, everything you may have done to keep your search private could be undone if you use a browser that monitors your browsing activity, particularly how you use search engines. 

In terms of search leakage, neither DuckDuckGo nor Qwant convincingly outperforms the other. 

Which Search Engine is More Private? 

If one needs a less invasive option than the likes of Google, Bing, and Yahoo, then either Quant or DuckDuckGo could be an alternative. Both search engines take great care to ensure that whatever you do on their site concerns only your business. 

However, if you prefer the strictest privacy options available, then DuckDuckGo might be a better choice.  

Pop-ups From Google are Now Blocked by DuckDuckGo

 


DuckDuckGo, a search engine, and browser that has been synonymous with privacy and data protection for years, launched a new feature that captures one of the most common pop-up advertisements on the web, Sign in with Google. 

Some sites produce this Google pop-up, such as Reddit (opens in new tab), Zillow (opens in new tab), and Booking.com (opens in new tab), that are frequently led to this Google pop-up when they load a website for the first time.  

There is a new feature that captures one of the most common pop-up advertisements on the web, Sign in with Google by DuckDuckGo, a search engine, and browser that has been synonymous with privacy and data protection for years. 

Aside from providing a privacy-focused search engine, DuckDuckGo also offers email services, mobile apps, and extensions designed to protect data in the browser. There is also an attempt to produce a standalone web browser, which is currently in beta and is only available for Mac computers. 

To present the user with a “cleaner and more privacy-sensitive experience,” the company announced that its updated mobile apps and Firefox, Chrome, Brave, and Edge extensions will take out all the disruptive and misleading pop-ups from its mobile apps and browser extensions. 

Signing in with Google is blocked by DuckDuckGo

Moreover, DuckDuckGo says that it does more than just remove annoying pop-ups.  

The company announced the change in a press release. This was because Google would be able to track users without them realizing if they allowed Google to link their accounts to their browsing history. A lawsuit (opens in a new tab) against Google's collection of browsing history, cookies, and other website data has been filed to stop them from collecting this information. 

According to DuckDuckGo, Google can potentially pitch this to web developers as a 'win-win' as it will allow them to display more relevant, targeted ads, increasing revenue for their websites. Consequently, Google allegedly collects a vast amount of information throughout its operations. 

DuckDuckGo for Android, iOS, and Mac are all available for you to use right now, along with our Firefox, Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge extensions.   

Privacy Essentials Vulnerabilities in the DuckDuckGo Browser Extension

 

DuckDuckGo, the widely used web extension for Chrome and Firefox, that is meant to protect the privacy of its users has resolved a universal cross-site scripting (uXSS) flaw. DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, which blocks hidden trackers and offers private browsing features, was identified with the vulnerability. The research scientist Wladimir Palant has disclosed that it can allow arbitrary code to be executed on any domain on victims' devices. While the issue has been patched in Chrome, no updates for browsers like Microsoft Edge were published in Mozilla Firefox initially while it was disclosed. 

First of all, for certain internal communication, the extension used unsecure communication chains which ironically caused a certain amount of data leakage through the domain borders. DuckDuckGo's second security vulnerability allowed the DuckDuckGo server to execute arbitrary JavaScripting code on a given domain, and a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in this extension. 

The security vulnerability could allow malicious actors to spy on all websites visited by the user, making confidential material such as banking and other data available. He says that even when browsing the website it leaves their privacy "completely compromised" and can even utilize web sites with defensive measures, like the security of information. Palant said that someone else controlling ‘http://staticcdn.duckduckgo.com’ can only use this vulnerability, which means that an attacker needs accessing the server. 

 “The data used to decide about spoofing the user agent is downloaded from staticcdn.duckduckgo.co,” Palant wrote. “So the good news [is]: the websites you visit cannot mess with it. The bad news: this data can be manipulated by DuckDuckGo, by Microsoft (hosting provider), or by anybody else who gains access to that server (hackers or government agency).” 

DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials 2021.3. solves both problems. While initially it solved the issue for Chrome only. For certain reason Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, two releases were missed (insecure internal communication). Although Firefox and Edge can now have an extension version with the fix. 

These vulnerabilities are very characteristic, because in other extensions he has seen similar errors several times. This extension is not only one where the developers are clueless. The Google Chrome extension platform merely does not offer safe and convenient solutions. So most developers of extensions are bound to do the first attempt wrong. 

“As a more advanced consequence [if the attacker was a government agency], your communication in the browser is no longer private, even when using a secure mail provider like ProtonMail or communicating with journalists via SecureDrop.” 

As informed by a Mozilla spokesperson: "The extension is available in a fixed version now. Firefox users receive it, depending on their extension update settings, either through a manual or automatic update extension check."

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser for Android Battling URL Spoofing Attacks



The latest version 5.26.0 of the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser for Android which has over 5 million downloads is allowing hackers to execute URL spoofing attacks by exploiting a spoofing flaw in the address bar.
The vulnerability which attacks the app users has been discovered by the security researcher, Dhiraj Mishra, who immediately reported the flaw to the concerned security department via the associated bug bounty program provided by the vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform, 'HackerOne'.
In a conversation with BleepingComputer, Dhiraj told, "this vulnerability was submitted to the browser security team via HackerOne on October 31st, 2018 initially this bug was marked as high the discussion went till May 27th, 2019, and they concluded this 'doesn't seem to be a serious issue' and marked the bug as informative, however, I was awarded a swag from DuckDuckGo."
In the vulnerable DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser for Android, the attackers execute this URL spoofing attack after altering the URL which is displayed onto the address bar of the infected web browser which is configured to trick victims into believing that the website being browsed is monitored by an authenticated source. However, in reality, the website would be controlled by the attackers carrying out the spoofing attack.
There is a high probability of the oblivious users to be unknowingly redirected to web addresses disguised as authenticated web portals which in actuality would be assisting malicious actors in accumulating the data of their potential victims either by phishing or by injecting malware into their systems through malvertising campaigns.
Earlier, in May, Arif Khan, security researcher, on detecting a similar vulnerability in the UC browser said, "URL Address Bar spoofing is the worst kind of phishing attack possible. Because it's the only way to identify the site which the user is visiting,"