DuckDuckGo launches new browser extension (including Safari) and privacy-focused app

You may not know it, but the search engine DuckDuckGo a great option to Google for people who seek more privacy in their searches.

Trying to escape the search market a little and offer more to users, they are now a very interesting novelty: a new extension for browsers (for now, Safari, Chrome and Firefox) and an app totally focused on privacy on the web.


DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser app icon

The premise is as follows: to prevent (or at least be more transparent) in relation to the wide range of crawler networks (managed by big companies like Google and Facebook), which monitor everything we do online in order to segment each time plus your ads on the respective platforms. You see, there is nothing "wrong" with that; their business model. What catches, here (at least in my humble opinion), that many times this all happens without our knowledge, too aggressively.

DuckDuckGo's new extension / new app wants to simplify online privacy by blocking tracking networks, offering smarter encryption and, of course, a private web search option. Now, what I liked most was a new feature that shows a privacy rating (which goes from "A" to "F") when you visit a website. According to them, this classification allows you to see clearly how you are protected based on the prevalence of hidden crawler networks, availability of encryption and privacy practices of the given website.

DuckDuckGo Extension

Still according to the company, most privacy policies are difficult to understand and not reviewed enough. So, even if they block all crawler networks and update encryption, a website can still use our data for a variety of purposes. So they joined TOSDR (Terms of Service; Didn’t Read), to include indexes of the website's terms of service and privacy policies (when available, of course).

Particularly, I think something like this makes more sense on macOS and Android, which are more open environments. On the iPhone, for example, I will hardly switch from Safari to the DuckDuckGo app for a variety of reasons that include mostly convenience. But still, the service is also available for iOS, in case you are interested.

via TechCrunch