Everyone is missing the point here. Let me break this down as simple as I can:
1. End user does a DDG search for "food"
2. The "food" query returns a list of search results, these results have each have a link, DDG wants to display the favicon for each link.
3. To be clear, DDG does not store or log the IP address of the user doing the query. They do, however, know what was queried, so they know "somebody" somewhere searched for "food". They have to know this, they are a search engine after all.
4. Since DDG wants to show the favicon "privately", and they dont want to put that logic/work on the client side (which could leak your IP), so instead DDG finds the favicon internally.
5. A DDG server, completely separate from anything search-related is then tasked with finding the favicon for your "food" query results, lets say the #1 result is www.allrecipes.com, so a DDG server goes to www.allrecipes.com and finds the exact favicon location.
6. The "found" favicons are then stored in a cache, and displayed from the cache like this: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/ip3/www.allrecipes.c... (and if no favicon is found in the local cache, you get a grey arrow by default)
7. I'd like to note, even with all this action, DDG doesn't know if you actually "visited" www.allrecipes.com, they simply know that some anonymous user did a search for "food", www.allrecipes.com was a search result, and a favicon was displayed. They dont know who searched for it because the users IP is not stored anywhere, they dont know if you visited www.allrecipes.com, they prevented you from leaking your IP to allrecipes.com since they didn't force the end user to load the favicon.
So whats the issue? What am I missing here?
PS: You know this works because after doing all these searches for food and seeing allrecipes.com (and even clicking allrecipes.com result in the DDG Mobile App or browser extension), guess what? allrecipes.com doesn't follow you around with re-targeting ads! Why? Because DDG prevented that from happening!
1. End user does a DDG search for "food" 2. The "food" query returns a list of search results, these results have each have a link, DDG wants to display the favicon for each link. 3. To be clear, DDG does not store or log the IP address of the user doing the query. They do, however, know what was queried, so they know "somebody" somewhere searched for "food". They have to know this, they are a search engine after all. 4. Since DDG wants to show the favicon "privately", and they dont want to put that logic/work on the client side (which could leak your IP), so instead DDG finds the favicon internally. 5. A DDG server, completely separate from anything search-related is then tasked with finding the favicon for your "food" query results, lets say the #1 result is www.allrecipes.com, so a DDG server goes to www.allrecipes.com and finds the exact favicon location. 6. The "found" favicons are then stored in a cache, and displayed from the cache like this: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/ip3/www.allrecipes.c... (and if no favicon is found in the local cache, you get a grey arrow by default) 7. I'd like to note, even with all this action, DDG doesn't know if you actually "visited" www.allrecipes.com, they simply know that some anonymous user did a search for "food", www.allrecipes.com was a search result, and a favicon was displayed. They dont know who searched for it because the users IP is not stored anywhere, they dont know if you visited www.allrecipes.com, they prevented you from leaking your IP to allrecipes.com since they didn't force the end user to load the favicon.
So whats the issue? What am I missing here?
PS: You know this works because after doing all these searches for food and seeing allrecipes.com (and even clicking allrecipes.com result in the DDG Mobile App or browser extension), guess what? allrecipes.com doesn't follow you around with re-targeting ads! Why? Because DDG prevented that from happening!