DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials

Privacy, simplified.

Protecting your privacy online is like protecting your home. Locking the front door won’t stop the most determined folks from getting inside, especially if you’ve left the back door and windows unlocked and an extra key under the doormat. That’s why we offer multiple types of privacy protection, most of which aren’t offered in most popular browsers by default.

With the press of a button, you get seamless protection from most 3rd-party trackers while you search and browse, access to tracking protections for emails you receive, and much more. Together these privacy essentials make more privacy your default.

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS

• Search Privately by Default — DuckDuckGo Private Search comes built-in, so you can easily search the web without being tracked.
• Escape Website Trackers Before They Load — automatically stop most hidden trackers (3rd-party scripts) from loading, which prevents companies from collecting and using (e.g. sale, ads, etc.) any data from these trackers. Our cutting-edge tracker blocking technology – called 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection – goes well above and beyond what you get in most popular browsers by default.
• Automatically Enforce Encryption — force many sites you visit to automatically use an encrypted (HTTPS) connection, which helps shield your data from Wi-Fi snoopers and network onlookers like your Internet provider. Most popular browsers only direct users to encrypted versions of pages in specific circumstances, like when you navigate directly to a page in the address bar. We check our list of upgradable sites for all links you click.
• Enable Built-in Email Protection — Over 85% of emails sent to Duck Addresses contained trackers that can detect when you’ve opened a message, where you were when you opened it, and what device you were using. Email Protection makes it easy to block most email trackers and hide your existing address when signing up for things online, all without switching email providers.
• Escape Fingerprinting — help stop companies from creating a unique identifier for you by blocking their attempts to combine specific information about your browser and device settings.
• Block Tracking Cookies— prevent most 3rd-party cookies from tracking you as you browse from site to site.

ADDITIONAL PROTECTIONS NOT AVAILABLE ON MOST BROWSERS

• Link Tracking Protection — helps stop companies from gathering your browsing history and other information via personal identifiers embedded in the links you click on.
• Embedded Social Content Tracking Protection — blocks embedded Facebook content around the web so they can't track you through their videos, posts, and comments found on other sites. You can easily unblock to view them if desired.
• Google AMP Protection — forces sites to load content directly from publishers instead of using Google-owned links, which are full of creepy trackers.
• Signal Your Privacy Preference with Global Privacy Control (GPC) — built-into our app, GPC intends to help you express your opt-out rights automatically by telling websites not to sell or share your personal information. Whether it can be used to enforce your legal rights (for example, current or future CCPA, GDPR requirements) depends on the laws in your jurisdiction.

Note about our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection following DuckDuckGo ad clicks: Our 3rd-Party Tracker Protection goes above and beyond what you get in most popular browsers by default, but we’re constantly working to make it more comprehensive. Currently, if an advertiser wants to detect conversions on their own website for our private DuckDuckGo search ads, our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection will not stop bat.bing.com requests from loading on the advertiser’s website following DuckDuckGo ad clicks, but those requests are stopped in all other contexts. This is because DuckDuckGo private search advertising is in partnership with Microsoft. As part of that partnership, viewing ads on DuckDuckGo is anonymous and Microsoft has committed to not profile our users’ ad clicks.

Read more about this and our Tracking Protections at https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/web-tracking-protections/

You don't need to wait to take back your privacy. Join the millions of people using DuckDuckGo and protect many of your everyday online activities with one app. It's privacy, simplified.