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Privacy Electronic Frontier Foundation The Internet

EFF Partners With DuckDuckGo (eff.org) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the two-is-better-than-one dept.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced it has enhanced its groundbreaking HTTPS Everywhere browser extension by incorporating rulesets from DuckDuckGo Smarter Encryption. According to the digital rights group's press release, HTTPS Everywhere is "a collaboration with The Tor Project and a key component of EFF's effort to encrypt the web and make the Internet ecosystem safe for users and website owners." From the press release: "DuckDuckGo Smarter Encryption has a list of millions of HTTPS-encrypted websites, generated by continually crawling the web instead of through crowdsourcing, which will give HTTPS Everywhere users more coverage for secure browsing," said Alexis Hancock, EFF Director of Engineering and manager of HTTPS Everywhere and Certbot web encrypting projects. "We're thrilled to be partnering with DuckDuckGo as we see HTTPS become the default protocol on the net and contemplate HTTPS Everywhere's future."

EFF began building and maintaining a crowd-sourced list of encrypted HTTPS versions of websites for a free browser extension -- HTTPS Everywhere -- which automatically takes users to them. That keeps users' web searching, pages visited, and other private information encrypted and safe from trackers and data thieves that try to intercept and steal personal information in transit from their browser. [...] DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine, also joined the effort with Smarter Encryption to help users browse securely by detecting unencrypted, non-secure HTTP connections to websites and automatically upgrading them to encrypted connections. With more domain coverage in Smarter Encryption, HTTPS Everywhere users are provided even more protection. HTTPS Everywhere rulesets will continue to be hosted through this year, giving our partners who use them time to adjust. We will stop taking new requests for domains to be added at the end of May.
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EFF Partners With DuckDuckGo More

EFF Partners With DuckDuckGo

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  • DDG's results have always been shit, but I've tried to switch to it a bunch of times without success. I guess I won't try again and will keep using Startpage, as I can't abide the EFF's treatment of RMS.

    • Re:No DDG (Score:5, Informative)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @08:14PM (#61278946) Homepage Journal

      DDG's results have always worked great for me. The few times I didn't find what I was after, I tried google and it didn't find it either.

      • Re:No DDG (Score:5, Interesting)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @08:17PM (#61278952)

        DDG's results have always worked great for me. The few times I didn't find what I was after, I tried google and it didn't find it either.

        Yup, this has been my experience the past few years as well. Although it's unclear to me whether DDG has gotten significantly better over that timespan, or if Google has gotten steadily worse...

        • Re: No DDG (Score:4, Interesting)

          by mu22le ( 766735 ) on Friday April 16, 2021 @03:32AM (#61279578) Journal

          For my queries the big G is still way ahead of ddg. I use the latter, but often find myself adding !g to the search query (the ddg shortcut to Google) after taking a quick look at the results.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nagora ( 177841 )

          DDG's results have always worked great for me. The few times I didn't find what I was after, I tried google and it didn't find it either.

          Yup, this has been my experience the past few years as well. Although it's unclear to me whether DDG has gotten significantly better over that timespan, or if Google has gotten steadily worse...

          Google has gotten steadily worse and is now more or less useless - I can go to Wikipedia on my own, thanks. DDG is unfortunately chasing "Google equivalence" IMO and as such is chasing Google down the same drain.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        You know I found the same thing if Duckduckgo failed, google missed but I am sure about that sometimes the ads filled the screen and I could see not results on google just ads.

        Don't forget to localise your search on duckduckgo, they don't data mine you, so they do now know where you are searching from, so you have to set the slider to you default country, rather than general if you want better regional results.

        Trying to use Google after using duckduckgo for more than a year is a really bad end user experie

    • I don't give a fuck about what the SJWs think about Stallman. I can't stand him because he kept going down ever more decreasing radical circles. The GPL 3 wasn't needed and discouraged a lot of people from using GNU tools and libraries. There are still projects that refused to go there. He listened too much to all his fanboys and got a big head about shit like that. Maybe it even contributed to his being too lippy as far as the SJWs were concerned.

      • just so you know... there's a huge difference between being "too lippy" and being a bigoted creep.

        • Re:No DDG (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @10:07PM (#61279146)

          just so you know... there's a huge difference between being "too lippy" and being a bigoted creep.

          And there's an even bigger difference between tolerance of different opinions, ,and removing people because they aren't violating laws, but don't think correctly. All right and left wing groups demand ideological purity. Good luck with that. Never works out well.

          • "All right and left wing groups demand ideological purity. Good luck with that. Never works out well"

            And the ideological 'puritans' are sometimes caught saying one thing in public and doing something contrary to their political dogma in (what they thought was) private.

            I've seen this kind of crap far too many times, and honestly, I'm sick of it.

            • Re: No DDG (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday April 16, 2021 @10:10AM (#61280260)

              "All right and left wing groups demand ideological purity. Good luck with that. Never works out well"

              And the ideological 'puritans' are sometimes caught saying one thing in public and doing something contrary to their political dogma in (what they thought was) private.

              I've seen this kind of crap far too many times, and honestly, I'm sick of it.

              Exactly. It's how we get anti-gay politicians who rail on about homosexuals in the day, but at night, they are gettin' some same sex action on the downlow. It's how we get people who preach inclusivity, but if someone has the wrong opinion, they want them gone.

              The huge problem of this exclusivity marketed as inclusivity is that it doesn't stop, and it has a habit of ratcheting to the next level of intolerance. It's how we get people celebrating the firing of Jim Damore for expressing his opinion, while having quite public protests over an ethics manager who acts in an extremely unethical manner being fired.

              If that's not some high level hypocrisy, I don't know what is. What is next - a "Contract for America", left wing version? Where you are told what your opinion is? Where you must conform or be cast out. (full credit to Rush's "Subdivisions")

              • What really irks me is when a group singles out one race saying it's the root of all the evil in this country, and then turns around and says "we are not racist".

                The definition of racism is solid, and 'combating' racism with more racism is highly hypocritical.

                • What really irks me is when a group singles out one race saying it's the root of all the evil in this country, and then turns around and says "we are not racist".

                  The definition of racism is solid, and 'combating' racism with more racism is highly hypocritical.

                  Exactly this. We often hear the SJW set spouting variations of "All old white men are racist and sexist" without a trace of irony.

                  But it is true - they are prejudiced bigots. They judge people they have never known by their age, their skin color, and whether they have a penis or a vagina.

                  The strange thing, that they consider "gender" a social construct, which leads to a possibly infinite number of self assigned genders, while their utter fixation on "race" is the ultimate social construct. We are all hum

                  • Strangely, there was very little uproar when a bunch of students decided to have a "beat up a ginger day" years ago. :-\

                    So we only get mad when people are targeted because of what's on a very limited list of biological characteristics?

                    • Strangely, there was very little uproar when a bunch of students decided to have a "beat up a ginger day" years ago. :-\

                      So we only get mad when people are targeted because of what's on a very limited list of biological characteristics?

                      Sad but true. What started out as a South Park episode meant to attack racism was co-opted and became something evil. In Hawaii, there is a "Kill Haole Day" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] in which Harassment and violence is directed against students based on skin color. FTA:

                      On December 31, 2008, the U.S. Department of Education released a report that concluded there was "substantial evidence that students experienced racially and sexually derogatory violence and name-calling on nearly a daily basis o

                    • "The report also concluded that school officials responded inadequately or not at all when students complained of racial harassment. Students who did complain were retaliated against by their antagonists."

                      This isn't new. Skewels have always been derelict when it comes to protecting students, and the common narrative is to punish both the victim and the bully, when the victim fights back, or sometimes the victim recieves a worse punishment than the bully.

                      People with titles and badges are the ones I trust the

          • show me the requirement to tolerate someone else's opinion.

            • show me the requirement to tolerate someone else's opinion.

              Show me what happens when you fire or cancel everyonw who does not share all of your opinions.

              That someone would even ask that question shows that whether far left or far right, strict adherence to things that have nothing to do with competency and working are becoming mandatory.

              Firing someone because they are a flirt is the same thing as firing someone who prefers to have sex with the same sex. Just depends on who's Ox is being gored

              This insistence on ideological purity is something that the USSR a

      • I don't give a fuck about what the SJWs think about Stallman. I can't stand him because he kept going down ever more decreasing radical circles. The GPL 3 wasn't needed and discouraged a lot of people from using GNU tools and libraries. There are still projects that refused to go there. He listened too much to all his fanboys and got a big head about shit like that. Maybe it even contributed to his being too lippy as far as the SJWs were concerned.

        We really do need a code of allowable opinions don't you think?

        Don't think right, and say the wrong thing, and remove a person from their career, and place a deserving person that conforms to the thoughts we have told them to have. Register them like sex offenders.

      • The GPL 3 wasn't needed and discouraged a lot of people from using GNU tools and libraries.

        Which is total bollocks, because those people weren't happy with GPL 2 either.

    • I can't abide the EFF's treatment of RMS.

      Exactly, same here.

      So, I wanted to stop "my" EFF membership, but noticed I actually hadn't set any up. My bad. Probably more out of lazyness rather than stingyness, and I now feel quite bad about this oversight. Indeed I can't stop any donation if I didn't make any in the first place :-(

      Figuring out that we still do need an organization that will defend the unjustly accused ever more so, I started thinking... and the obvious occurred to me. There are other organizations which more or less stand for the sa

      • I used to donate to the ACLU too, but they started advocating for abolition of the 2nd amendment and went completely radical with their immigration policies. Saying shit like the border wall is illegal and rallying in defense of illegal aliens who committed crimes, including that six-times-deported illegal alien in CA who picked up a gun, shot a woman in a crowd, and walked past her as her father lay over her body. They're a radical leftist organization now.

        • but they started advocating for abolition of the 2nd amendment

          Not really. They started advocating for reading the 2nd amendment in its entirety, rather than only its second sentence.

          Anyways, I still prefer a civil rights defense organization which wants to ban dangerous weapons over one that wants to consider speech to be dangerous (or hurtful) weapon.

          Saying shit like the border wall is illegal

          What's the problem with that?

          rallying in defense of illegal aliens who committed crimes, including that six-times-deported illegal alien in CA who picked up a gun, shot a woman in a crowd, and walked past her as her father lay over her body.

          Couldn't find anything on this tragic case. Care to elaborate (link to news article? link to ACLU's own statement about this?).

          Ironically enough he wouldn't have been able to find a gun lyi

  • I keep trying their search engine and give up almost immediately. The most recent time, a few months ago, I tried searching for a technical article from Microsoft. Even after typing in the exact title of the article DDG couldn't find it. It wasn't a subscription article, or one one of their obscure servers. I keep coming to the conclusion that DDG, while well intended, is mostly useless as a search engine.

    • I keep trying their search engine and give up almost immediately. The most recent time, a few months ago, I tried searching for a technical article from Microsoft. Even after typing in the exact title of the article DDG couldn't find it. It wasn't a subscription article, or one one of their obscure servers. I keep coming to the conclusion that DDG, while well intended, is mostly useless as a search engine.

      Can you remember what it was? I'll give it a try.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JimMcc ( 31079 )

        Sorry. It was last fall and I'm over 60. I can't remember what I had for dinner yesterday. I was trying to research a problem with M/S Office 365 administration or something related. I know, that doesn't help you.

        • Sorry. It was last fall and I'm over 60. I can't remember what I had for dinner yesterday. I was trying to research a problem with M/S Office 365 administration or something related. I know, that doesn't help you.

          No problem. I just love analyzing the ways different search engines work. It's been getting to the point where even on DDG the first page of results are worthless unless I'm trying to buy something.

          The internet is badly broken.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Yep, its search results suck. :(

  • Starting just over a year ago DDG search results have been utterly offtolic and irrelevant to my queries even when trying to force keywords with quotes that I started prefixing everything with "!G" to get Google results until I finally changed my search back to Google. It worked well while it lasted, but nowadays it's a terrible engine. Destined to fail. I understand the EFF is aligning with the *idea* that DDG stood for, but in practice it is meaningless.
  • Started with StartPage to drop all things Google.
    How brain second graders are they? ONLY 10 or results. [keep wearing out mouse]

    Switched to DDG when they came out.
    It not that great in the mountain of results and that sucky attitude is in all search.
    I'm Prime member.
    search "collagen powder"
    Get all stats of matter existence powder, liquid, etc. along with baby powder, butt powder, pussy powder
    All I wanted was exactly in the quotes, and accept total failure because I have a mild dyslexia where once
    I t

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