DuckDuckGo users were recently unable to find links to The Pirate Bay (opens in new tab) and other popular torrenting sites (opens in new tab) in the company’s search engine.
While initially it seemed that the company deindexed a number of domains (opens in new tab) used for illegally downloading movies, TV shows and even YouTube videos (opens in new tab), it turns out that technical issues led to the glitch instead.
(opens in new tab)First launched in 2008, DuckDuckGo (opens in new tab) is an alternative search engine that aims to better cater to the needs of privacy-conscious internet users that don’t want their search data ending up in the hands of Google or other large tech giants. The company has since expanded its operations and it now offers its own browser (opens in new tab) in addition to a search engine.
This isn’t the first time that DuckDuckGo has dealt with the issue of pirating as back in 2018, the company removed around 2,000 search shortcuts for pirate sites called “bangs” for The Pirate Bay, 1337x and RARBG. Although these bangs were removed, DuckDuckGo stressed that the sites themselves still showed up in its search results.
Not a DuckDuckGo issue
After TorrentFreak (opens in new tab) published its initial report on the matter, a DuckDuckGo spokesperson reached out to the news outlet to inform them that no pirate domains were removed from its search engine according to the company’s records.
This appears to be true as you can now search for The Pirate Bay, 1337x, RARBG and other popular torrenting sites and they show up in DuckDuckGo’s search results.
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In a tweet (opens in new tab), DuckDuckGo founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg (opens in new tab) explained that the issue was caused by the company’s site operator and not be it delisting pirate domains in its search results, saying:
“We are not "purging" YouTube-dl or The Pirate Bay and they both have actually been continuously available in our results if you search for them by name (which most people do). Our site: operator (which hardly anyone uses) is having issues which we are looking into.”
While DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine, it actually uses data from Bing (opens in new tab) for its search results. A DuckDuckGo spokesperson confirmed to TorrentFreak that the issues its search engine recently experienced were related to Bing data.
Although you can now once again search for popular torrenting sites on DuckDuckGo, downloading movies, TV shows, games and other software isn’t just illegal but you also run the risk of having your system infected with malware (opens in new tab) and other viruses.
- Protect your privacy online on any search engine with one of the best VPN services (opens in new tab)
Via TorrentFreak (opens in new tab)
