Is DuckDuckGo a virus? Why do people recommend it?
i'm not the most tech savvy person and get viruses very often. the most annoying virus i ever got was a few years ago when i got a really sticky virus that changed my search engine to duckduckgo. it took MONTHS including some safemode bootup shenangigans to figure out how to get rid of it, but i literally couldnt find anything else that the virus was doing aside from changing my search engine and not letting me set it back to google, at least on a surface/task manager level.
i've avoided duckduckgo ever since, thinking that it was something that is somehow worse than google for privacy and collecting your data, but now that i'm looking for anti-ai alternative search engines every post i see has that supposed 'virus' site as a top tier recommendation! is there any reason aside from "iTs BeTtEr ThAn GoOgLe" as to why people use it, or any ideas as to what the everloving hell that virus was doing with duckduckgo if it is safe to use???