[tor-bugs] #4902 [Tor Browser]: Change the default search engine in TBB

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#4902: Change the default search engine in TBB
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 Reporter:  phobos       |          Owner:  erinn   
     Type:  enhancement  |         Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal       |      Milestone:          
Component:  Tor Browser  |        Version:          
 Keywords:               |         Parent:          
   Points:               |   Actualpoints:          
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Changes (by m):

 * cc: 5p4m@… (added)


Comment:

 Searches of users logged in to G+, Gmail or other Google services can very
 likely be traced by Google and we can be sure that Google will continue to
 work on tracing their users as much as they can. Gathering and connecting
 data is their business, hence they are by default a threat to the privacy
 of TOR users. We cannot keep users away from using Gmail or G+, so we
 should at least take precautions that their internet searches will not be
 traced by default. If they add Google themselves, so be it.

 Alternatives have been mentioned here in various postings. DDG is the only
 one of the mentioned search engines that is actively supporting TOR. DDG
 is running a TOR relay and an exit enclave. DDG gave a part of their 2010
 revenue FOSS donations to TOR and the DDG community nominated the TOR
 project again for 2011 revenue FOSS donations. On the other hand the
 IXQuick/ Startpage-people seem to be ignorant towards the TOR project.
 Scroogle gives anonymized Google searches but seems to be unreliable.

 Therefore please add the DDG TOR service as the default engine for future
 versions of TBB. Maybe add Scroogle as an alternative and delete the
 default search engines (Google, eBay, Amazon etc.). The person behind DDG
 is usually very responsive and helpful and obviously aware and supporting
 of TOR which may be helpful in the future.

 DDG is by the way not a Google scraper as mentioned earlier. AFAIK they
 gather data from several different sources and their own crawlers.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4902#comment:11>
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