DuckDuckGo is an American search engine known for its strong focus on user privacy. However, as it seems, the stain falls on the best piece of cloth. A report submitted now raises questions about the company’s privacy focus on a deal with Microsoft. The collaboration allows Redmond to continue following users on the platform.
The platform is known for blocking monitoring software from Google and Facebook, among others. But now it has been discovered that Microsoft is supposed to have a “green road”.
As reported by Bleeping Computer, security researcher Zach Edwards posted on Twitter that "while DuckDuckGo has blocked Google and Facebook locators, it has allowed Microsoft's locators to continue working."
You can capture the data inside the so-called DuckDuckGo private browser on a website like Facebook https://t.co/u8W44qvsqF You will notice that DDG does not stop the flow of data to Microsoft's LinkedIn domains or Bing's advertising domains.
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- ℨ (thezedwards) May 23 2022
Tests showed that the browser allows software Monitoring related to Bing and LinkedIn domainsbut all other URLs are blocked.
Edwards' topic caught the attention of Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGO, who said the browser intentionally allows Microsoft locators to be third-party sites due to a search-sharing agreement with Redmond.
When you upload our search results, you will be completely anonymous, including ads. For ads, we work with Microsoft to protect ad clicks. From the public announcements page,Microsoft Advertising does not associate ad click behavior with a user profile".
As for blocking a non-search locator (eg in our browser), we block most third-party locators. Unfortunately, our Microsoft Search Sharing Agreement prevents us from doing more with Microsoft properties. However, we are constantly pushing and hope to do more soon.
DuckDuckGO CEO said Gabriel Weinber.
While it doesn't seem very important because, technically, users aren't being followed, DuckDuckGo's focus on privacy is jeopardizing the company's vision. Either the company insures everything in terms of privacy, or it doesn't offer privacy.
After Bleeping Computer posted the tweets, DuckDuckGo sent a statement to the post saying it would be more explicit with Microsoft's partnership and that it would continue to improve users' right to privacy:
We've always taken care not to pledge our anonymity while browsing, because that's frankly not possible, given how quickly locators change the way they work to evade the protection and tools we currently offer (...).
What we're talking about here is an up and down protection that most browsers don't try to do - that is, block third-party tracking scripts before they're uploaded to third-party websites. Because we do this where we can, users still get much more privacy protection with DuckDuckGo than if they were using Safari, Firefox and other browsers (...).
Our goal has always been to provide as much privacy as possible in a single download, by default without any complicated settings.
In short, what is being said is that complete privacy is a utopia, and what you see is a kind of "more or less" privacy.
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