I’ve told you about the DuckDuckGo search engine and how its promise of “We don’t track you – period.” Click here to read that article.
Well, turns out that wasn’t quite accurate. The company issued a public apology for allowing Microsoft to load third-party trackers into the allegedly tracker-free DuckDuckGo search engine.
Company CEO Gabriel Weinberg said, ” I’ve heard from a number of users and understand that we didn’t meet their expectations around one of our browser’s web tracking protections.”
As a result, Weinberg said his company has made some changes. “Previously, we were limited in how we could apply our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection on Microsoft tracking scripts due to a policy requirement related to our use of Bing as a source for our private search results. We’re glad this is no longer the case. We have not had, and do not have, any similar limitation with any other company.”
Weinberg said DuckDuck Go is actually increasing its tracking protections. He explained that even though the company does have an advertising agreement with Microsoft, they are attempting to count the ad clicks to make revenue without invading your privacy. “Advertising on DuckDuckGo is done in partnership with Microsoft. Viewing ads on DuckDuckGo is anonymous, and Microsoft has committed to not profile our users on ad clicks: “when you click on a Microsoft-provided ad that appears on DuckDuckGo, Microsoft Advertising does not associate your ad-click behavior with a user profile. It also does not store or share that information other than for accounting purposes.”
Gheesh. really.