How do I get to do a search with duckduckgo? Not obvious.

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I just tried to do a search with duckduckgo, so the page would not be clogged with “hits” of a zillion ads for several pages followed by things totally unrelated, something I’ve done easily enough in several occasions in the recent past for this very reason. It was a simple matter of searching with, let’s say, Google, for ‘duckduckgo’ and bingo! there it was a link to the search engine: click on it and there was the search field for typing in the keywords.

Today it has not worked out like that. Instead of access to the search engine, all I get is an endless series of articles about duckduckgo, manly actually from duckduckgo, but no duckduckgo in person, as it were. I wonder now how to do a search with this engine without subscribing or learning some funny secret handshakes, or whatever else might be required now — if at all possible.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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In the address bar of your browxer, type duckduckgo.com and hit Enter.

Or click this url:

https://duckduckgo.com

 

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OscarCP

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bbearren wrote:
In the address bar of your browxer, type duckduckgo.com and hit Enter.

Or, to save a few keystrokes and half a second, just type duck.com and hit Enter… 😀

Hope this helps.

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Also, you should be able to make it the default search engine for your browser, especially if you use Firefox or derivatives.

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Thanks bbarren: I must have had that search field right in front of my nose and just missed it among all the duckduckgo advertising (that the duckduckgo.com site mostly is.)

Thanks also zsat so. I am somewhat reluctant to change default engine (Google), but rather prefer to choose whichever seems best for the occasion. And if Google spies and helps companies target me with advertising? Well, good luck to them! I do not buy things advertised at the top of Google searches, nor do I search for things to buy often enough for some interesting pattern to emerge from that, and always use an ad blocker when visiting sites, have “do not” track set in all my browsers, etc. Is my privacy very safe that way?  No, but it is probably small pickings for the personal infovacuum software of Google and their like, and so my best wishes of good luck to them.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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In Firefox, if you add DuckDuckGo to your search plugin list, you can just start typing in the search field in the URL bar, and it will pop up icons for each of your search options.  When you are done typing, just click the search icon you want to use, and it will search there instead of using your default (if you hit enter, it will do that).

As far as Google goes, it’s not just that they track you… they also manipulate search results according to what they think you want to see, what they want you to see (based on their desire to get ad revenue), or other reasons.  That’s why I’ve been using DDG more and more recently rather than StartPage, which uses Google’s search results, but strips the tracking.  It’s possible that Google doesn’t mess around with the StartPage search results to the same degree as their own, but it’s Google– and there’s no way to know for sure.  I really don’t like the idea that the links I am being shown are not based completely on relevance to my search terms!

I haven’t used an actual Google search in some time now.  I now use DDG as my go-to, and I use StartPage if I am not happy with the DDG results, and actual Google… pretty much never.  I try to engage with Google as little as I can.

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Elly, gjacwel, Cybertooth, jburk07, SueW, satrow

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Ascaris,

Thanks. I do not use FF but have Waterfox as my default browser in my Mac, and in both the Win 7 and Linux installed in my good old PC that originally was just a Win 7 one. I’ve never liked FF, long story as to why.

But, although I use Google in many of my Web searches, I do not get targeted ads: what I was referring to is the very long list of links marked “ad” preceding anything that might actually interest me in the list of “hits” returned by Google searches. Most such ads are from or about the company, or item, I am trying to find out something about — even if this is the very first time I’ve had any interest on that company, or item, resulting in this search — as well as about companies that have products somewhat related to the keywords I have used.

So no: the leading links are only to pages of companies that have something to do, even vaguely, with my current search and with this search only, to pages where the contents are mostly praises to the products of those companies and offers to sell them to me or have me download them for a trial, etc. This happens even if I never have made a search on that topic before, and are always about that one topic of my search, not about something where there might be a pattern of my repeated interest on the subject I am looking for, but that actually there isn’t, because there cannot be.

I occasionally buy books and DVDs online, as well as products such as large-size sponges and other things needed for my regular housekeeping I cannot find at the local supermarket, or bookshop. I’ve never, ever got any ads for those things.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

But, although I use Google in many of my Web searches, I do not get targeted ads: what I was referring to is the very long list of links marked “ad” preceding anything that might actually interest me in the list of “hits” returned by Google searches.

Those are targeted ads.  Any ad you get from Google is a targeted ad.  About all you can do is limit the info they have to do the targeting, but even if you do, it’s still targeted, just based on less info.  I wouldn’t tolerate having any ads in my search results, personally.

Google is still fiddling with the search results.  Someone other than you could enter the same search terms and get a different set of links in return, based on what Google thinks it knows about that person.  It’s not just the ads, but the links themselves (and even if it doesn’t say “ad,” it could still be that they paid Google to get a higher placement in the listings of any search related to a certain thing).

When you do a search in Google, the results will be related to the search term, but they’re not based only on that.  Having nonsensical results would hurt Google’s brand and the position of its search engine as the world’s top choice.  The results are based on your search terms and what Google wants you to see.  They should be based on the search terms alone… any two people entering the same query should get the same result every time, deterministically.  They don’t, and the details of how Google is fudging the results are unclear (and intentionally so).

 

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Ascaris: Perhaps you are right, but if I were targeted for ads of something, even when doing the one search I’ll ever make in my whole life on that particular subject, that is not a thing that would worry me. What bothers me is having to go more than one page to find something useful. If the intention was to pile up ads hoping I will buy something so advertised, this fails miserably every single time: Google and its pals the advertisers get zilch from me for their efforts. Or, well, OK: Google gets paid by the advertisers to give their ads a place at the top, or near the top of the list of so-called “hits”. I don’t much care about Google’s finances, as long as that does not hurt me. Which, as far as I have noticed, it does not.

And to repeat: the “targeting” is only about the specific topic of the search: I do not get ads for CDs, books or large size kitchen sponges, which is what any decent targeter (so to speak) should be piling up at the top of all my search returns. (Don’t tell them I wrote that.)

And is duckduckgo any different, better, in practice? Don’t have enough data yet to figure that out. But, taking advantage of the fact that I have been shown here how to find the ddg search field to enter key words and start a search with their engine, I am still checking.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Not messing with the search results is part of DDG’s business model, so I do think it is likely to be true that when they claim they don’t mess with them, they’re speaking the truth.  They have to have some reason for people to use them instead of the default Google, and that’s theirs.  If it was discovered that they were doing the same things that Google is while claiming not to, it would be the end of them.

When DDG first appeared, I tried it and found it to be quite inferior to Google’s results, but a lot has changed since then.  Google has gotten a lot worse in terms of its results… it has become increasingly difficult and frustrating to try to find what I want.  DDG has improved, and since I moved to DDG as my initial go-to (using Startpage if/when DDG does not work for me), I haven’t noticed any big change in the quality of the results as I had seen before.

I only ever really used Google after the real Altavista disappeared.  Altavista was the first decent search engine, IMO… the previous ones, like Lycos, AOL Webcrawler, early Yahoo, etc., all left a lot to be desired.  Altavista came out about a year before Google, if I recall, and it worked really well.

When this new Google thing appeared, I tried it, and found it was not better than Altavista, and I never revisited it until Altavista was bought out by Yahoo, by which time Google was already a household name, and on its way to being the Galactic Empire of the web that they are now.

One day I was particularly frustrated with the terrible search results of Altavista… and I noticed that at the bottom of the page was “powered by Bing.”  Yahoo gave up their in-house Altavista search that worked really well and outsourced it, replacing it with a third-party source that worked far worse.  That was when I reluctantly switched to Google, for want of anything better.

 

 

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Google’s page after page of ads BEFORE your search shows up is remarkably profitable, targeted or not, not to mention time consuming-your time! Consider the number of people worldwide who use google and see these ads. If even 0.5% respond, that’s $billions!

I used ddg until I found how close they are in bed w/ Amazon…I use amazon prime for 15 yrs now. But I use start page and then ddg , rarely google(sounds like something dirty!)

Whatever works tho

D

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Not all those ads are marked as “ad”, but they might just as well be. For example: lets say I am interested (here a totally imaginary example) in a King of 13th Century Serbia known as “John the Hunchback” (although there was nothing the matter with his back) and who used to marry a fine-looking young lady, who had to bring to their marriage an exceedingly valuable dowry, but who never survived the apparently great exertions of the wedding night and, unlike Scheherazade, was not around afterwards to tell the tale. And that this was something that, mysteriously, kept happening night after night for the whole eighty years of his reign (that he ascended to at the already ripe age of 34). And, for obvious reasons, this king also happened to only have illegitimate children; and very numerous ones.

So I enter: king Serbia hunchback — as search keywords.

And I, that never before have made a search on a Serbia-related subject, get many, many “hits” such as: “Best hotels in Belgrade”; “Serbian Airlines welcomes you and your family…”,  and so on and so forth. Followed, after this very long list of irrelevant Web links, not with “hits” on Web pages with information about bad King John, but the usual, totally unrelated duds, such as “Fireworks declared illegal in Montenegro”, “King-pins are just business people that sell only the good stuff”, and so on and so forth.

But if Google makes tons of money off that, it does not make it off me: it merely aggravates me, something I do not need and that is why I’m considering other search engines. Does any of the above sound familiar?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Ascaris

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@oscarcp – I used this string to add a special AskWoody-results “search engine” link in my browser. @parkernathan is currently testing it to see if it works elsewhere, currently pending test results.

Maybe you could try it too, if you are able to add a new search engine to your Waterfox:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s+site%3Aaskwoody.com&ia=web

 
To be able to add a non-askwoody searcher, you should just be able to use:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s

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OscarCP, jburk07

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Kirsty,

Thanks for those two links. At the moment I have placed the link to DDG in one of the tiles of the Waterfox “New Tab” page, along with several others I use often (Google, Netflix, my bank, etc.) At least for testing this service, see how well it works for me, this arrangement is quite convenient. At some point I may decide, if I get to like it well enough, whether to make DDG’s my WF home page.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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I did the test with it in LaunchBar. I managed to get it working. Here’s what I did:

1. I opened the LaunchBar Index from the Gear Menu on the Bar.
2. I added a Search Template (UTF-8). I named it AskWoody and added this template: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=*+%25s+site%3Aaskwoody.com&ia=web
3. I summoned AskWoody from LaunchBar (I now assigned keystroke AW), so now I can summon LaunchBar, type AW, hit enter, type a search term, and have it search AskWoody.com!

Nathan Parker

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woody, OscarCP

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Nathan: Wonders will never cease! Is this one exclusive to DDG?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Nathan Parker

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OscarCP wrote:

Is this one exclusive to DDG?

This one is. Kirsty may have syntax for other search engines.

Nathan Parker

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Give me a hint on which search engine, and I’ll see what I can do.

PS I’ve found the AskWoody DDG special search parameters very handy, since I was able to get it working 🙂

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I’ve moved to Startpage.com and do not miss the ads at all! I have read it is actually Google results w/o the garbage. Sometimes I have to go to DDG but startpage is pretty good to me.

DriftyDonN

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I wish I didn’t have to use Zoom. My school requires it. We’re on MS365 for student emails, so I wish they’d just move us to Teams.

Nathan Parker

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Nathan: “I wish I didn’t have to use Zoom. ”

It is dispiriting, isn’t it? One scandal after another, and this in what it really (and easily) could be two very important services: one to people trying to teleconference or to have a conversation with friends and family over the Internet, and another to those searching the Web to find the things they are interested in, and nothing more.

The Web used to be, for me, like a marvelous, practically infinite library stacked up to the endless ceilings with books and magazines and rare documents put on the equally endless shelves in no particular order. And with no index card system accessible to look for where one could find whatever one wanted to find there. Until, oh joy!, Google came around, committed to “doing no evil.”

Now it has become a sort of bad oriental bazaar where people are always annoyingly and persistently hawking things at you, where grubby touts for this and that come uninvited after you and stick by you while prattling away their well-practiced trivial spiels, where spies lurk in the shadowy nooks and corners, discreetly following you around to snoop on your personal information and to pass on your current location to third parties unknown and unknowable to you.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Cybertooth, DriftyDonN, Nathan Parker

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Do you (or anybody else reading this) know of alternative video-chat software that non-techies can use? After the latest revelations about Zoom, I am actively interested in anybody but Zoom.

OTOH, I haven’t been crazy about Skype ever since Microsoft changed how it works into a fully centralized-server model.

Anybody have experience with Jitsi Desktop? To judge from the installation screenshots (see step #2 under “First Use”), you need to have an account with some other service first in order to use Jitsi Desktop.

Peer-to-peer is preferred.

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Nathan Parker

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Try Jitsi Meet? No download or account required.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Cybertooth, Nathan Parker

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I can’t find any structured description of how to use that Jitsi Meet… software? app?? add-on??? And clicking on the jitsi.org link at top left of that Jitsi Meet page leads me to a page I’d seen before, where only apps for Apple and Android are offered.

The whole thing looks rather half-baked and disorganized to me. I like to understand how something works before I jump into it!  🙂

 

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[PKCano]

@Elly –

I am curious how are you using E2EE in Jitsi.

And are there limitations of concern?

Thanks,

Razz

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• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by PKCano.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Razz.

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Hello @Razz-

Jitsi Meet is designed for privacy by default. You are not required to establish an account to use it.

A meeting only exists from the time the first person joins, until the last person leaves.

Any names, e-mail addresses or profile pictures are only transmitted to the other participants in the meeting… and are not saved once the meeting ends.

The end to end encryption (e2ee) is for chrome based browsers (Chromium 83 and up).

Since I’ve only used Jitsi Meet for family chats, and most of the family are FaceBook users who put their info out anyways, I haven’t changed browsers in order to use end to end encryption. The video and audio is encrypted when sent over the network, even without e2ee… they are never stored to any persistent storage… and since only people who have the meeting name, and password, as well as the time set for the meeting will be able to join, I’m not terribly worried about it.

The biggest limitations of e2ee is that server provided options such as recording, live streaming, and phone participation are disabled. Several family use the phone to access, so that is another reason not to use, at this point.

To be truly secure, one would need to install Jitsi on one’s own server, rather than using Jitsi Meet… but I figure the risk of any video or voice data being accessed at the ‘bridge’ points, as well as the relatively benign information being discussed, makes it relatively unimportant in my personal use scenario. The Jitsi Meet people are not collecting data, to be collated over time, and then designing advertising around it, or selling it…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Thanks for your input @Elly

I presume if the originator (who sends out invites) is a defacto host of the meeting, and he leaves the meeting, that should terminate the meeting even if others have not switched off?

Makes sense?

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Not Win 11 eligible.

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No, the meeting is done when the last person exits. Individual people can leave/join/rejoin as long as at least one person is still in the meeting.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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If all devices are using Apple devices, there’s always FaceTime. It’s easy to use.

Cisco WebEx and Microsoft Teams offer free tiers, but they’re mainly geared for businesses.

We also use GoToMeeting at work, but it’s another more business-oriented solution.

Nathan Parker

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Cybertooth

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This thread seems to have changed from Duckduckgo to Zoom alternatives. I would say that the posts about Zoom alternatives should be in the ‘proper’ part of the lounge with their own thread, so that all can find and comment.

Just my 2p worth

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Nathan Parker, OscarCP

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True and good analogy. I use what I have to for work and school, but it is sad some of the issues that have crept into the Internet (privacy/security issues, social media drama, etc). I remember the days when it was more of the virtual library.

Nathan Parker

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OscarCP, DriftyDonN

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Oscar, I bookmarked the following to get right to just doing a search with duckduckgo without all the additional information on the main site
https://start.duckduckgo.com

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Nathan Parker, OscarCP, woody

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