DuckDuckGo for Android's 'App Tracking Protection' feature has reached open beta, allowing all Android users to block third-party trackers across all their installed apps.
The DuckDuckGo for Android app is a privacy-focused web browser, search engine, and data protection utility, downloaded over 10 million times from Google Play. It includes numerous privacy features, including search term anonymity, hidden tracker blocking, email tracker protection, auto-HTTPS, and one-tap browsing history clearing.
The 'App Tracking Protection' aims to increase privacy throughout the entire operating system by blocking third-party tracking scripts in other Android apps installed on the device.
"It's a free feature in the DuckDuckGo Android app that helps block 3rd-party trackers in the apps on your phone (like Google snooping in your weather app) – meaning more comprehensive privacy and less creepy targeting," announced DuckDuckGo today.
Compared to the previous close beta version of the feature, the new version of App Tracking Protection lets Android users see exactly what trackers are blocked and what type of data they are targeting.
The feature is somewhat similar to Apple's 'App Tracking Transparency,' but unlike the Apple feature, DuckDuckGo's system does not depend on the app developers' compliance with user choice.
Blocking all known trackers
DuckDuckGo says Android users have an average of 35 apps installed on their devices, generating between a thousand and 2,000 tracking attempts daily for over 70 tracking companies.
The App Tracking Protection promises to block all these attempts in the background while the users regularly browse the web, play games, or check the weather on their devices.
This blocking also happens without causing a noticeable impact on device performance, something that was improved on the latest version of the app (v5.143.1).
The blocking is based on a constantly updated and growing list of known trackers and is independent of the user's choice in the associated tracking request dialogs usually served within apps.
To activate the new feature, the user has to open the DuckDuckGo app on Android, navigate to Settings → More from DuckDuckGo, and then enable App Tracking Protection, as shown below.
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Source: DuckDuckGo
The feature works by configuring the DuckDuckGo for Android app as a VPN on the device, which allows the app to filter traffic from other apps and block trackers.
However, unlike a traditional VPN, this does not provide anonymity while browsing the web or connecting to remote devices and is only used locally.
“App Tracking Protection uses a local “VPN connection,” which means that it works its magic right on your smartphone and without sending app data to DuckDuckGo or other remote servers,” explains DuckDuckGo.
Therefore, to enable the feature, DuckDuckGo will request the user allow the VPN connection to be created, which is required for the blocker to function as expected.
From then on, the app will regularly update the user with automatically generated summaries of blocked app trackers to give them an idea of what is happening behind the scenes.
Those who want to evaluate how threatening each app is to their privacy can use App Tracking Protection’s real-time view to see what trackers are loaded and blocked.
(DuckDuckGo)
App Tracking Protection is a powerful tool, but users should keep in mind that the feature is still in the beta stage of development.
Therefore, it may cause sites or apps not to function correctly, for some trackers to remain undetected, or lead to performance issues. If you run into any of these issues, you can disable the feature.
Comments
NoneRain - 1 year ago
Adguard app ftw. Gonna try this function to see how it works, tho.
JustANybble - 1 year ago
This appears to duplicate the functionality of TrackerControl.
rober7 - 1 year ago
Since i found out they are sharing data with Bing i dont trust so much Duck...
napyduoa - 1 year ago
How do they monetize this? The app seems to be freely available in Play Store.
Blooloo - 1 year ago
Great idea which gave me a shocking list of trackers but it really is somewhat unworkable for me in it's present form.
Apps that do not now work at all (spinning wheel of death..) unless I exclude them include:
Tidal
Instagram
BlueMail
My banking apps x 2
My local newspaper app
Kindle android app
EasyPark app
Disney+
Netflix
Amazon Prime
Cinema app
Uber
CityguyUSA - 1 year ago
And here's the stupidity to this ridiculous ad tracking. They're advertising what you just bought because they're idiots that are programming this shit and designing it. Yeah, so after I just spent several hundred dollars on a tablet guess what's being advertised to me.
This sharing data of non-aggregate personal finances, medical info needs to be a felony. Well medical would fall under HIPPA so it may well be a felony. The funny part of HIPPA is that most medical businesses think it's suppose to prevent you from having access to your data.
That's gotten better since 2008 where we have portals that allow us access to some of our data but again these are just waiting for bad actors to gain access. Financial data shouldn't even be allowed to be accumulated by the big 3 so-called credit rating agencies as we've seen these are just sites that are waiting to be hacked and have been.
One more thought regarding data access transparency. We need a federal standard of privacy so we can all stop pretending that we're reading the 100 pages of an agreement that some website knows we're not going to read and we need to be able to have our own demands if their going to insist on this individual site policy that we can post onto their agreements that would force them to read millions of lines of things we won't agree to regardless if they say we do or not. Why is it that we are always subject to business demands but we have no agency or voice at all. Either we have our own voice or a standard privacy policy.
We also need to eliminate this stupid non-liability policy of all these software makers. Software is so bad at this point it's a time waster without providing acceptable functionality. We buy software because it says it will do X, Y and Z and then one day Y doesn't work and then a month later Y still doesn't work then another week goes by an Z doesn't work. A year later we are being charged rent and Y and Z still don't work yet our data is inside that software with little ability to just put it somewhere else because of their monopoly industry and just the data layouts from one product ot the next make it impossible to just load it in. They provide no support of any real value often ignoring emails or forums stating that they have a call center where you can reach them maybe 8 hours a day and that's after how long you spend on hold and then you get to spend hours walking them though the problem because they have no comprehension of what the software does or how it works so they screen scrape everything (no data privacy problems there) and then manage to have you delete your own data then they hang up and leave you with a mess. So essentially no call center is even worthy of calling at least not that I've encountered. Android apps just stop responding to anything and yet the software is still available on Google Play or whatever other places you get apps from . They've had more than enough years of liability protection it's time to end it.