There was a big controversy last May after DuckDuckGo’s privacy-focused web browser was revealed to allow Microsoft to track scripts on third-party websites. And the company has now announced that it will start blocking them as well.
By default, DuckDuckGo’s browser has third-party tracker upload protection that blocks scripts embedded in websites from Facebook, Google, and others. But until now, scripts from Microsoft’s Bing and LinkedIn domains (but not third-party cookies) were not blocked.
DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg said at the time that this was due to a search agreement with Microsoft and that more updates on third-party tracker prevention would come. Some have criticized the company for DuckDuckGo’s own words that “tracking is tracking”, a phrase the company uses against Google’s “privacy sandbox” ad technology that replaces cookies.
Now, Weinberg says in a blog post: “I’ve heard from several users and realized that our browser is not meeting the expectations of one of their web tracking protections.”
DuckDuckGo also promises to be more transparent about which trackers its browser and extensions protect users from, makes tracker block lists available, and begins offering users more information on how tracking is protected with a new help page.
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