I mainly want to use Ecosia because they use their ad revenue to plant trees, something I can definitely get behind. But their privacy policy is somewhat concerning. Namely this part:
For example, when you do a search on Ecosia we forward the following information to our partner, Bing: IP address (obfuscated), user agent string, search term, and some settings like your country and language setting.
Additionally, by default Ecosia sets a Bing-specific “Client ID” parameter to improve the quality of your search results. If your browser has “Do Not Track” enabled, we disable the “Client ID” automatically. You can also choose to disable this feature by modifying your user settings.
UMatrix also detected Ecosia connecting directly to Bing’s image servers whenever a search contains images. Though I feel that if I use Do Not Track, a VPN, and ensure my user agent string is sufficiently generic, Bing shouldn’t get any more data out of me than DuckDuckGo (my current search engine) would?
What do you think of Ecosia? Does the tree planting outweigh the privacy issues? Would you use it over something like DuckDuckGo?
As far as I know Ecosia doesn’t earn money if you don’t click on the ads which would completely defeat the purpose of using it but I could be wrong in that regard.
Don’t internet ads generate revenue just from you looking at it? So as long as you turn your ad blocker off for that site?
From their FAQ:
I stand corrected then.