Post by R.WieserI'm normally using DuckDuckGo as my search-engine, and for a time now
have noticed it returning, only on the first page and always at the
bottom, results that have to do with my (supposed) location, even
though I'm searching for technical information.
Just now I seached for "win32 bagMRU records" (yes, Windows registry
related >: -) ), and got entries back like "postal codes in {city}",
"Genealogy in {area} - Trace your {country} roots" and "List of
cities, towns and villages in {area}", none of which seem to be even
remotely related to any combination of the keywords I supplied.
Does anyone have an idea what is going on here ? Mind you, the fact
that these results are, as mentioned, only returned on the first page
and at the bottom gives me the idea that its on purpose.
But what is that purpose ? Just to try to be creepy by letting me
know where they think I live ?
And by the way: I can't remember having *ever* searched for anything
related to those results.
In Firefox, which I configure to purge ALL locally cached data on its
exit, and also disable its geolocation reporting (geo.enabled = false),
I do not get the locale oriented search hits you mention at the bottom
of the first page, or anywhere in the first page. Since I purge all
locally cached data on exit, any cookies, site preferences, DOM Storage,
and other data is gone after an exit.
Perhaps you don't do a clean exit, so Firefox remembers some of that,
like cookies for search settings you configured for use at ddg.com. One
of the DDG search settings is Region. For me, it is "All regions".
While I could set Advertisements to off, that won't stick since I don't
keep any cookies or other local data on exit.
DDG added its own AI Features. Other search engines added AI, too. I
dislike the search engine attempting to present a panel in the search
results page thinking its content is what I'm looking for. For example,
when I use Google's search engine on "duckduckgo showing local search
results geolocation disabled", it pukes out the following AI-built
content before showing the regular search results:
If DuckDuckGo is showing local search results even though geolocation
is disabled, you can try these steps:
* Check your device's location services: Make sure location services
are enabled on your device. You can check this by:
- Clicking the permissions icon in the address bar for Chrome,
Firefox, or Brave
- Opening the Safari menu and selecting Settings for DuckDuckGo
* Restart your browser: Try restarting your web browser.
* Improve the accuracy of your location: You can opt-in to improve the
accuracy of your local search results by enabling location. This
allows your browser to use techniques like WiFi databases, cell
tower location databases, and GPS.
* Clear your browser cookies: You can manually clear your browser
cookies for duckduckgo.com.
DuckDuckGo uses a GEO::IP lookup to guess your location by default.
However, this process isn't always accurate.
You can also change your DuckDuckGo settings via URL parameters by
adding them after the search query. For example, you can use
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=search&kp=-1&kl=us-en.
I'd try modifying the URL to append. I'm guessing "&kp=-1&kl=us-en" is
what gets added to change geolocation prediction. The "Geo::IP" is just
the old method of using the client's IP address to determine in whose IP
pool it belongs, and getting its location just on the IP pool.
https://metacpan.org/pod/Geo::IP
However, by "DDG" it is unclear if you are using an unnamed web browser
to visit there along with any add-ons you installed into it, or are
using the DDG web browser as noted at:
https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/get-duckduckgo/does-duckduckgo-make-a-browser/
Well, sites have been using IP location for a very long time. While DDG
might be collecting that data, that doesn't explain why DDG would start
pushing search hits based on geolocation. Didn't happen for me.
A recent update to Firefox (you didn't mention your web browser)
modified the geolocation feature. If geo.enabled = true, now Firefox
will provide geolocation to a site, but it is temporary. Once the tab
is closed, the geo data is purged for that tab. See:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/131.0/releasenotes/
I set geo.enabled = true, but didn't care for my geolocation known while
the tab remained open, so I went back to geo.enabled = false.
I still prefer that *I* tell a site where I am when I decide to reveal
that info. Well, other than a site getting IP geolocation using my IP
address when I connect to their site. I would need to use a proxy, VPN,
or Tor to mask my IP address, but I'm not that paranoid yet.