DuckDuckGo Is A Step In The Right Direction For User Privacy

If you’re unfamiliar with DuckDuckGo, they are an Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal
information online, without any tradeoffs.

Whenever you are connected to the internet your data can be collected,
tracked, and used against you, Google and Facebook are tracking you,
what you watch, where you shop, even when you sleep, their hidden
trackers follow you through the internet on millions of sites and apps.
They build detailed profiles and allow advertisers to bid on you, that's
how their business works.

Over the years, DuckDuckGo has offered millions of people a private alternative to Google, serving over 16 billion anonymous searches.
However, they are excited to launch fully revamped versions of our
browser extension and mobile app, extending DuckDuckGo's protection
beyond the search box to wherever the Internet takes you.

It’s hard to use the Internet without it feeling a bit creepy – like there’s a nosey neighbor watching everything you do from across the street. Except, instead of a nosey neighbor, it’s a vast array of highly sophisticated tracker networks, run by big companies like Google and Facebook, recording everything you do online, often without your knowledge, and selling their findings to the highest bidder via targeted ads. While closing the blinds at home can put a stop to your neighbors, there isn’t something that simple that can work online. Until now.

Today DuckDuckGo is taking a major step to simplify online privacy with the launch of fully revamped versions of DuckDuckGo's browser extension and mobile app, now with built-in tracker network blocking, smarter encryption, and, of course, private search – all designed to operate seamlessly together while you search and browse the web. DuckDuckGo updated app and extension are now available across all major platforms – Firefox, Safari, Chrome, iOS, and Android – so that you can easily get all the privacy essentials you need on any device with just one download.

The DuckDuckGo browser extension and mobile app will also now show you a Privacy Grade rating (A-F) when you visit a website. This rating lets you see at a glance how protected you are, dig into the details to see who they caught trying to track you and learn how they enhanced the underlying website's privacy measures. The Privacy Grade is scored automatically based on the prevalence of hidden tracker networks,
encryption availability, and website privacy practices.

To date, cobbling together an effective privacy solution has required researching complicated technologies, installing multiple add-ons and apps on each device, and often worsening your Internet experience. Others have been unfortunately misled by supposed simple solutions. Think “Incognito” mode blocks Google from watching what you’re doing? Think again. Private browsing modes are marketed to make you think that if it's not in your device’s browser history, it never happened. Sadly, that couldn't be further from the truth.

With the new DuckDuckGo browser extension or mobile app, you are now able to seamlessly:

The vast majority of websites across the Internet contain hidden tracker networks,
with Google trackers now lurking behind 76% of pages, Facebook’s
trackers on 24% of pages, and countless others soaking up your personal
information to follow you with ads around the Web, or worse. DuckDuckGo
Privacy Protection will block all the hidden trackers they can find,
exposing the major advertising networks tracking you over time, so that
you can track who's trying to track you.

While not all sites offer an encrypted version, thankfully this has been rapidly changing.
If DuckDuckGo discovers a site that offers an encrypted version but
does not send you to it automatically, DuckDuckGo will. This encryption
protects you from eavesdroppers, like ISPs, grabbing up your personal
information as it travels across the Internet between you and the
websites you visit.

Most privacy policies are difficult to understand and aren’t reviewed
closely enough. Even if DuckDuckGo block all the tracker networks
DuckDuckGo finds, and even if DuckDuckGo upgrade encryption, a website
could still be using your data for nefarious purposes, such as selling
it to third parties.

DuckDuckGo partnered with Terms of Service Didn't Read (TOSDR) to include their scores of website terms of service and privacy policies, where available. However, because most privacy policies still remain unstudied, DuckDuckGo is working with TOSDR to help them to rate and label as many websites as possible.

Of course, the DuckDuckGo app and extension also include DuckDuckGo private search! You share your most personal information with your search engine, like your financial, medical, and political questions. What you search for is your own business, which is why the DuckDuckGo search doesn’t track you. Ever.

Because of these widespread poor privacy practices, too many people believe you simply can’t expect privacy on the Internet. DuckDuckGo disagrees and has made it their mission to set a new standard of trust online. DuckDuckGo wants privacy to be the default, not the exception, and this launch is a major step in that direction.

For the last decade, DuckDuckGo has been giving you the ability to search privately, but that privacy was only limited to the DuckDuckGo search box. Now, when you also use the DuckDuckGo browser extension or mobile app, DuckDuckGo will provide you with seamless privacy protection on the websites you visit.

DuckDuckGo's goal is to expand this privacy protection over time by adding even more privacy features into this single package. While not all privacy protection can be as seamless, the essentials available today and those that DuckDuckGo will be adding will go a long way to protecting your privacy online, without compromising your Internet experience.