DuckDuckGo will offer their temporary or disposable mail service free
14/09/2022After launching the beta version of the new temporary or disposable mail service, 'Email Protection', DuckDuckGo has announced that once tested it is now available free for all users. 'Email Protection' is presented as a solution to be able to have a second 'e-mail' address to use in subscriptions and pages likely to send ‘spam'. Available from the DuckDuckGo mobile app and browsers, the service incorporates privacy protections against link tracking and smart encryption against unencrypted links, and features such as direct response. The accounts that are created through 'Email Protection' as a secondary email will contain the domain @duck.com and among the recommended uses proposed by DuckDuckGo are free trials or registration in services that usually send advertising or spam.
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DuckDuckGo sees Google's AMP tool as a threat to user privacy
29/04/2022After the presentation of Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), DuckDuckGo has announced that has begun to protect its customers from this new service that they interpret as interfering with user privacy. AMP is a tool that, according to Google, enables fast loading of websites on mobile devices and improves their performance. But DuckDuckGo claims that what it really does AMP is prioritize the display of sites that have adopted it and favor ads from Google on these pages. This is why, this alternative search engine focused on offering the greatest possible privacy to its users (it doesn't collect information from searches) has decided to introduce protections against AMP technology in their applications and extensions for iOS, Android, Mac, Chrome and Firefox and has announced that DuckDuckGo will show the original website of the editor instead of the one adapted to AMP.
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DuckDuckGo introduces a feature to protect Android smartphones from trackers
26/11/2021DuckDuckGo goes a step further in terms of security and has just announced a new tool for Android Smartphones that block the tracking of user data. In fact, it is an extension that can be already tested in its beta version -with a waiting list- and that according to DuckDuckGo was born to stop the theft of information ( according to AndroidRank.org, 96% of the most popular free Android applications contain trackers. A 87% send data to Google, and 68% to Facebook). This free extension is called 'App Tracking Protection' and it is integrated into the search engine's 'app', so it is not necessary to keep it open for it to work. Trackers blocking can be reviewed in real time through DuckDuckGo and it can also detect which networks are tried to keep users personal data to. In addition, one can activate the notifications service to receive summaries of its operation.
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Common front against advertising based on user surveillance
19/01/2022Facing the forthcoming vote on the EU Digital Services Law, a group of 17 civil organizations and 14 digital companies have demanded the European Parliament prohibit invasive and hostile practices with privacy that take place in digital advertising such as user tracking. According to his complaint, companies that specialize in monitoring the behavior of Internet users, integrate data from all websites, something that entails a violation of EU data protection regulations. In addition, they remember, these advertising practices make use of "inferred data that reveals vulnerabilities of the users" and, in general, they insist, this data are obtained without the knowledge of the user and beyond their control. The signatories, including the privacy-focused search engine companies DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, denounce also that these types of practices only favor a few “dominant players” based in the United States, and they specifically cite, among others, Facebook and Google. As an alternative to these advertising systems, they propose to follow initiatives such the Dutch television channels NPO and Norwegian TV2, which opted for contextual advertising and increased their income from ads.
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