[zucan]

Not analyzing IP addresses to deliver more relevant results seems pretty aligned with that whole "respecting your privacy is our main selling point". I gladly add another word to my queries if that keeps DDG from taking a step towards where google is today.

[m000]

A couple of months back, everybody went ballistic when the EU GDPR declared IP addresses as "personal data". Can't recall any posts/articles that were actually defending this GDPR provision—if you can point us to one, I'd love to read the counter-arguments.

So I believe that there is a consensus that using IP addresses to improve search results would be fair game for DDG. It's also consistent with the DDG promise: "we don't track you".

OTOH, not using them has only marginal effect on user's privacy: (a) DDG doesn't serve ads anyway, and (b) the metadata of user's online activity are still available to three-letter agencies to analyze.

[opportune]

as long as they aren't being stored, it shouldn't matter. You could just read user's IP, use that to filter results, then throw it away

Also IP by itself isn't really that much of a privacy problem. It only becomes a problem when it's used in the process of delinkage of more sensitive information

[h1d]

It's better if the engine does analyze IP to bring relevant information but not keep it related to search history for later analysis.

Bringing all the result pretending everyone lives in US sounds like a crappy strategy.

[amelius]

Also consistency is to be valued. Example: if I say to someone else over the phone to search for "X", then I usually want them to see the exact same search results as I do.