[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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Comment(by mikeperry):

 Replying to [comment:11 m]:
 > 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.

 It turns out that Google offers encrypted search on https://www.google.ca.
 The different TLD will cause Tor Browser's url isolation to prevent Google
 from tracking google.com users when google.ca is used for search, but
 google.com is used for authenticated services.

 > 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.

 I would accept a patch to change our default search engine to DDG and/or
 to add DDG and StartPage to the Omnibox, because captchas fucking suck.
 But changing it right now myself is not a super high priority. I imagine
 Erinn is thinking the same thing.

 Note that we already have code to use DDG as the searchbox on
 check.torproject.org (#3962), but since it's no one's job to admin check,
 and no one wants to give admin access to anyone else, that code will
 probably sit around forever unused :/.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4902#comment:12>
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