The well-known search service DuckDuckGo was forced to reject the categories that were released and want to use browser fingerprinting to monitor its users.
Doing so would be completely contrary to DuckDuckGo's raison d'etre, which states that it does not collect personally identifiable information data by its users. So a charge like this could be devastating to the service. 
For those who don't know DuckDuckGo (DDG) is a searching machine just like Google or Bing engines.
However, the big difference is that DuckDuckGo promises to protect your privacy. Thus, unlike its rivals, DuckDuckGo "does not collect or share personal information".
DuckDuckGo provides search results based on the keywords used, although it displays ads to pay its accounts. The company claims, however, that even the ads it displays are clearly based on the keywords users are looking for.
How did the story begin?
Cue a disgruntled one user on forum Whonix has discovered that DuckDuckGo uses the "Canvas DOMRect API" in the search engine. The user claims to have confirmed this using CanvasBlocker, a Firefox add-on developed by Korbinian Kapsner.
Canvas could be used for browser fingerprinting, where websites and advertisers collect identifiable information from the browser. So according to the user from DuckDuckGo "they sell data without question".
DuckDuckGo refused the browser fingerprinting, and Brian Stoner, VP of Search, replied to the forum posting, saying:
"Many fingerprint protection extensions adopt a scorched earth approach, preventing any browser API that could be exploited by a malicious user."
The founder and CEO of DDG, Gabe Weinberg, said to TechCrunch that this is a “false positive” result (false positive) and insisted that DuckDuckGo only uses getBoundingClientRect() to “determine the size of the browser and how the page is laid out.” According to Weinberg this is the likely culprit.
Let's say that DuckDuckGo is growing in popularity every month. In January of 2017, DDG celebrated 10 billion searches since launching 2008. While 2018 only service idlers made 9 billions of searches.
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