14 DAY TRIAL // DuckDuckGo is a private search engine that you have heard of quite a bit in the aftermath of the NSA scandal, when Google’s powers to maintain user privacy were questioned.
The private search engine that keeps no records of people’s searches has made a new announcement over its Twitter page, namely that there is now a new settings page.
“If you missed it, we launched a new version of the DuckDuckGo Settings this weekend,” the message reads.
Aside from the obvious interface upgrade, you can fiddle with a few options here about how the search engine handles your queries.
For instance, you can have DuckDuckGo provide results based on a specific region around the world, or pick a language you want to see across the site.
You can also disable the safe search feature which keeps adult materials out of searches, or stop the Instant Answers feature which automatically opens relevant results.
Furthermore, it’s possible to disable endless scrolling by turning off the Auto-Load feature, or to shut down the Auto-Suggest feature. You may also handle how the results are opened, namely if they’ll load in a new tab or a new window.
Turning on and off the ads that will help DuckDuckGo remain afloat is also possible. The search engine’s interface can be changed from the “Appearance” area, where you can pick between five themes, select a new font, font size, the page width and the alignment, as well as the colors for results, background, header and so on.
Privacy options can be handled from the separate tab. You can tell the search engine not to share your searches with sites you click on, use HTTPS, or playback videos within the page results.
All settings can be saved to the cloud so you don’t have to fill them in all the time. “Your passphrase is used to generate a key using the Secure Hash Algorithm known as SHA-2, using a 512 bit key. Your passphrase never leaves the browser, only the key and the settings file associated with it. We save the settings file on Amazon S3 using the generated key as the name. In the interest of transparency, this data is not encrypted: you can see exactly what information we store,” DuckDuckGo explains for those who may be confused about saving data for a service that says it won’t save any of your information.
