warning about duckduckgo

[bookbard]

I downloaded duckduckgo as an alternative to google, however I noticed that there was an increasing amount of adult content popping up even on the first page when I searched for ordinary things. I put it on 'strict' safe search - made no difference. And by adult I mean very disturbing. I've deleted it from my computer and ensured it's off my kids' computers too. 

[Ausmumof3]

3 minutes ago, bookbard said:

I downloaded duckduckgo as an alternative to google, however I noticed that there was an increasing amount of adult content popping up even on the first page when I searched for ordinary things. I put it on 'strict' safe search - made no difference. And by adult I mean very disturbing. I've deleted it from my computer and ensured it's off my kids' computers too. 

Thank you.  I’ve been wondering what we’ll do if we lose google.

I use safari on my phone but internet explorer is so buggy we don’t use that for windows stuff.

[Melissa Louise]

Ecosia? Don't know who runs that though.

[RootAnn]

I've switched over to startpage.com for searching. It uses g00g1e but provides a bit of a buffer between you & their search page. (I don't understand it exactly.) It takes some getting used to.

I use the Brave browser which is really similar to Chrome, FWIW. Neither of these changes is perfect, but they are my incremental shift away from g00g1e.

[Melissa Louise]

Answering my own question above, Ecosia uses Yahoo and Bing. Haven't had any probs with searches bringing up disturbing material.

 

[Katy]

4 hours ago, bookbard said:

I downloaded duckduckgo as an alternative to google, however I noticed that there was an increasing amount of adult content popping up even on the first page when I searched for ordinary things. I put it on 'strict' safe search - made no difference. And by adult I mean very disturbing. I've deleted it from my computer and ensured it's off my kids' computers too. 

You might want to go look at your internet history and cookies. 

[ieta_cassiopeia]

That is odd. I've never had any adult material appear on Duckduckgo, even on moderate settings. Something seems to have gone very, very wrong. Clearing the cache (and internet history, as Katy advises) would be a good thing to check, but you're right to be concerned because a search engine that doesn't track you shouldn't behave like that.

[mathmarm]

We use Duck Duck Go and have never had adult material offered to us in our search results.

I would suspect that you may have a computer virus.

[Teaching3bears]

I must be living under a rock but is there some reason not to use google?

[73349]

6 minutes ago, Teaching3bears said:

I must be living under a rock but is there some reason not to use google?

Google tracks you and sells data, like Facebook. I find the personalization very much unwanted--e.g., if I Google a brand, it wants to show me the store closest to what it thinks is my location. Super nosy and inappropriate IMO.

 

I use Ecosia most of the time.

[lynn]

We've been using duck duck go and have not had anything like that happen on any of our computers.   

Sweep for a virus?

[ieta_cassiopeia]

1 hour ago, Teaching3bears said:

I must be living under a rock but is there some reason not to use google?

I object to Google's privacy practises, the trackers it uses slow my computer down a lot compared to alternatives that don't track, and also found it not very good at finding the sort of results I want (in other words, its attempts at personalisation give me worse results than I get from a search engine that doesn't try to personalise my search experience).

For example, I was following a specific F1 team and because of certain news relating to it, Google proceeded to send the next three months trying to sell me business financial consolidation (I didn't own a business at the time), when searching for news about that team (which, as a sports fan, was what I actually wanted when I typed in the terms I was typing - none of which named the business financial consolidation directly).

People who consider the selling of a certain amount of their data to be a reasonable trade for the service, those with better computers than me and people whose search behaviour more closely resemble what Google's algorithm expect will find Google more useful to them than I do.

Edited January 30, 2021 by ieta_cassiopeia

[Ellie]

Well, that's a bummer. 😞

I have used Dogpile for over 20 years.

[bookbard]

6 hours ago, lynn said:

We've been using duck duck go and have not had anything like that happen on any of our computers.   

Sweep for a virus?

I will, but I did look online, and other people had had similar issues, apparently because they give you whatever relates to your search no matter what - so I was looking up kids sitting positions - awful stuff came up. Go to google and just normal stuff came up. 

[forty-two]

I've been using DuckDuckGo for a few years and thankfully haven't had any issues like that.  I just tried your " kids sitting positions" search on my DuckDuckGo, and I had no problems - everything on the first page was just fine. 

Edited January 30, 2021 by forty-two

[bookbard]

Wow, that's really odd. As I said, I googled and had a look at commonsense media and other people had had the same issues. 

I'm the only one using my computer, everyone has their own, so I'm not concerned about anyone looking up weird stuff - and that shouldn't affect the alogorithm anyway. It could be a chance glitch - but I'm not going to risk it again. 

[Wheres Toto]

How does a search engine like duckduckgo decide what results to show/what order to put them in?

[RootAnn]

17 hours ago, bookbard said:

I downloaded duckduckgo as an alternative to google

You downloaded the browser for duckduckgo? I didn't even know that was a thing. Most people just set their search engine inside their browser to duckduckgo, don't they?

[forty-two]

10 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

You downloaded the browser for duckduckgo? I didn't even know that was a thing. Most people just set their search engine inside their browser to duckduckgo, don't they?

I've been using the DuckDuckGo browser on my tablet, as an alternative to Firefox (because Firefox is a memory/battery hog).  I like it well enough, although it appears that keeping multiple tabs open is just inherently a battery hog <sigh>.  No search issues, in any case.

[bookbard]

35 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

You downloaded the browser for duckduckgo? I didn't even know that was a thing. Most people just set their search engine inside their browser to duckduckgo, don't they?

Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant.

[Murphy101]

I’ve had DuckDuckGo for years with none of those issues.

[LAS in LA]

G00gl3 does actually work pretty hard at not showing "adult" content in search results unless the search is very clearly seeking that kind of content. (I used to work for a G. subcontractor evaluating search results). 

[Liz CA]

22 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Thank you.  I’ve been wondering what we’ll do if we lose google.

I use safari on my phone but internet explorer is so buggy we don’t use that for windows stuff.

Quant may be an option.

[vonfirmath]

23 hours ago, bookbard said:

I downloaded duckduckgo as an alternative to google, however I noticed that there was an increasing amount of adult content popping up even on the first page when I searched for ordinary things. I put it on 'strict' safe search - made no difference. And by adult I mean very disturbing. I've deleted it from my computer and ensured it's off my kids' computers too. 

We have used duckduckgo for years and never had this.

[TAFKAPastry]

Add me to the pile who has used DDG for years and never had issues. We run it on multiple computers and devices. My spouse prefers Brave, but not because of content issues with DDG:

[Acorn]

Small thread drift:

I went to common sense media and it looks like they now want a membership?

[RootAnn]

@AcornI think you can still read all the comments without a subscription but need one to finish reading what CommonSenseMedia.org says about something?