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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Available Now – DuckDuckGo Browser for Windows

June 27, 2023

DuckDuckGo is focused on privacy.  I’ve been using its App Tracking Protection on my mobile phone to block hidden trackers from the apps I use. In the past seven days, DuckDuckGo has blocked 10,783 tracking attempts across 13 apps on my phone. I also use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine instead of Google. Google has enough information about our internet habits. Last week, I switched my default browser over to use the newly released beta version of DuckDuckGo Browser for Windows and haven’t looked back. Tech Viral posted information about the various features.

  • Duck Player – Built-in video player that lets you watch YouTube videos without contributing to your personalized recommendations or your YouTube advertising profile. It also protects you from tracking cookies and personalized ads when watching YouTube.
  • Secure Password Management – The browser includes its own secure and easy-to-use password manager that can automatically remember and fill in login credentials. DuckDuckGo for Windows can now also suggest secure passwords for new logins.
  • Tracker Blocking – Blocks all invasive third-party trackers before they load, eliminating ads that depend on that creepy tracking. ‌‌‌‌
  • Smarter Encryption – Automatic HTTPS upgrading for every website you visit and the links you click, using an open-source crawler.
  • Cookie Pop-Up Management – It’s a tool that automatically selects the most private options available and hides cookie consent pop-ups that are designed to trick or coerce users into accepting an option offering the least privacy.
  • Fire Button – With one click, this button erases traces of websites that you have visited (like cookies, website caches, and favicons), browsing session information (like open tabs, back button history, and visited URLs), and permissions granted to websites (like geolocation, camera, and microphone settings).
  • Email Protection – Built-in DuckDuckGo Email Protection can hide your email address with unique @duck.com addresses when signing up for things online.

I particularly like the management of cookies. There are a lot fewer annoying pop-ups asking to confirm your cookie settings. If you are interested in what DuckDuckGo is blocking, just click on the shield symbol in the URL bar. You will be amazed at all the tracking crud trying to be sent over the internet just by visiting a website. To see how many tracking attempts have been blocked in the past 7 days, just open a new tab. In a little over 4 days, my stats show that the DuckDuckGo browser has blocked 4,637 tracking attempts. At the present time, the browser does not support extensions, although support is coming.

You can get the DuckDuckGo Browser for Windows at https://duckduckgo.com/windows. Remember that it is still a beta version, but I haven’t had any issues with website functionality so far.

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