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my Searches in duckduckgo seem affected by my IP address (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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i vary my IP randomly to try to be tracked less on the internet by ad companies.

when using duckduckgo, i notice my results of certain searches seem slightly correlated to the IP I use if there's anything that could be impacted by location.

this is also not just country specific, where duckduckgo is narrowing this down based on country

i am not sure if duckduckgo is passing on the IP or if somehow bing has partnered with data centers or ISPs to try to guess the IPs going into duckduckgo.

I also may be sensing this correlation and it's just random and not there. i could be wrong.

Does anyone else ever notice this or wonder about this?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Just checked your vacation search and I'm getting a best of lists from different websites. So far it looks like the usual places people would want to visit and nothing specific to where I'm located.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

the original thing that seemed strange to me may have been a coincidence then.

my actual experience was worse than the example. it's like i was using a berlin based IP address, and did a search for luggage, and then the result was "Berlin Luggage Ecofriendly Designs." It could have been coincidental, but a top result had the city of the IP in it and there was nothing I mentioned in the search related to the IP. I also use a browser and OS system such that duckduckgo should know from javascript that I am likely and English speaker.

But sometimes coincidences happen.