The well-known search service DuckDuckGo was forced to reject the accusations that they wanted to use it browser fingerprinting to track 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 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 disaffected user at 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 Browser. So according to the user from DuckDuckGo "they sell without question data".
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 told TechCrunch that this was a "false positive" result and insisted that DuckDuckGo only use getBoundingClientRect () to "determine browser size and page layout." According to Weinberg, this is the possible 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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