Google is tracking you even when you use DuckDuckGo [privacy respecting search engines, via trackers on the websites that you visit] (www.simpleanalytics.com)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 58 points 5 days ago

Wow! What a headline: It makes it sound like DDG was compromised by Google.

spoiler

It wasn’t.

DDG protects you from Google (knowing your search history, and which links you clicked from each search) while you are on the DDG website. Of course it doesn’t protect you from trackers once you leave DDG. For that you need other cookie and tracking blockers like PrivacyBadger, uBlockOrigin, and Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection.

It is definitely an important point that up to 40% of US sites send user data to google, but that is not something unique to DDG. A more accurate headline would be “Google is tracking you even if you never use it.”

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Indeed. uBlock Origin is a must for applying filter lists, IMHO.

I also use uMatrix to block all scripts and XMLHttpRequests by default, as well as images and everything else from third parties. It makes it easy to see from where a site is trying pull scripts to run on my computer, and to enable them on a per-domain basis when I want to. (uBlock Origin technically has this functionality, but uMatrix has a much better interface for it, and still works despite no longer being developed.)

Google domains are banned at my place.

this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025

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