Is chrome feeding google all my address bar search queries, even though search is set to Duck Duck Go?

[UberTiger]

I switched my default search in Chrome to Duck Duck Go a while back, and I usually type the search into the address bar rather than loading the full site and using the search field on there.

This morning I had a kid ring my door bell and leg it, standard kids stuff, I was trying to remember the name of what it's called and typed in "Ding Dong Ditch" into the Chrome address bar, the Duck Duck Go results page came up. I don't think I clicked any of the search results, just red the site descriptions, and definitely didn't click any youtube videos.



Less than a half hour later I'm on youtube and I'm getting low view count Ding Dong Ditch related content in my recommended feed from a channel I've never heard of.



I run ublock origin, and ghostery, so I can only think that maybe Chrome is intercepting the search queries even though the default is set to DDG? What's the point in being able to change the default search engine if Chrome is still scraping all my search queries?

 

[UberTiger]

Yeah, that's what I thought, but I didn't click through to any site apart from the Duck Duck Go search results page, I just checked my history and I never left DDG.

 

[UberTiger]

That's it, I'm only communicating with other people via carrier pigeon from now on, doing all my research at libraries, shopping in person and using my old Encarta cd's to learn about stuff instead of wikipedia.

 

[UberTiger]

I think he's just being alarmist ... what percentage of chrome users actually disable aforementioned web activity saving ,

I actually disabled all my web tracking in my google account a year or two ago, which makes this even worse. So Chrome is taking my search query to Duck Duck Go, just because it was placed through the Chrome address bar and then influencing the search result of a different YouTube account that's logged into that browser.