If I understand DDG correctly, they use Microsoft Bing as their backend for search results. So while they may be branded DDG, the results are in fact out of DDG’a control. It also means we are more subject to Microsoft’s privacy policy than we are to DDG’s.

This is exactly right. DDG is basically a front end that’s supposed to strip out identifying information and then submit your request to Microsoft. [Edit:] Apparently they have expanded from this, according to their Wikipedia page. [/E]

However, after seeing TV ads for DDG not that long ago I kind of lost what faith I had left in them. As a rule of thumb, I’ve never trusted products and services advertised on TV - TV advertising is expensive, and the business expects to make that expense back and then some from their customers.

Erm, WhatsApp would suggest otherwise.

WhatsApp was the vector for zero click access to a target’s phone from Israel’s weapons grade hacking Pegasus toolkit. They would send a video call, typically in the middle of the night, and with no input from the used they’d get full access. My personal belief is that they used functionality WhatsApp itself uses to access user data.

There was also an encrypted phone called ANOM, which had this trick calculator app with a hidden encrypted messager. “Made for criminals, by criminals”. Except, when the guy started his business he got investment from the FBI and Australian Federal Police to pay for the servers and some of the phones themselves. Basically every time it sent an encrypted message it sent a separate encrypted message to the ANOM servers. It’s entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that WhatsApp would do this also.

As for Google, they’re truly insidious. Lots of banks now require you to connect to Google captcha servers - they don’t give you the pictures, it’s just the back end, basically the tracking parts. Then there’s the controversy about them collecting location data when users have said no. They absolutely do collect data they shouldn’t.

It seems so strange to me that everyone buys the bullshit that personal data is worth very little.

The data brokerage industry is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Yet, there are only ~8 billion people in the world, many of whom don’t have internet access or have very little data being traded. Thus it’s reasonably safe to assume that an average regular internet user’s data is worth somewhere in the region of $1,000 per year.

These companies don’t do anything with the data. We create the data, they collect it and sell it, then whoever buys it is the one that actually makes something from it. If we allow the brokers a very generous profit margin, they are still stealing $500-700 from every one of us, every year.

Sounds like the internet in the 90s.

It’s strange how the disproportionality of wealth makes theft seem ok.

Empress is pretty much the only person who cracks Denuvo DRM - the only other person who publicly releases cracks only does it for Football Manager games. However, Empress is just a little unhinged, as this post demonstrates.

There was an r/HobbyDrama reddit post that covers much of the history: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/rowk83/digital_piracy_the_rise_of_empress_how_one_woman/