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Contents:
DuckDuckGo started to roll out an email privacy feature that is created to strip incoming messages of trackers able to help profile you for better ad targeting. The DuckDuckGo Email Privacy service aims to protect the users from hidden trackers often embedded in emails received from various companies.
The users of this service will get a free “@duck.com” email address and their messages will be cleaned of trackers and forwarded to the users’ inbox.
The trackers work by letting email senders know when you opened their messages and in this way help ad companies create a profile of you based upon the collected metadata.
This data might include such information as the device you used to read the email when you opened the message, and your general location, and unfortunately this sort of information can end up also in the hands of third parties.
How Will the Email Protection Work?
The email protection works by using a “@duck.com” address. This email address will filter out any hidden trackers in your messages and after cleaning them will send the emails to your normal inbox.
This means if you use an email service like Gmail or Yahoo, it’s no problem! Emails sent to your Personal Duck Address will arrive there as usual so you can read your email like normal, in any app or on the web, worry-free.
This service is also making available disposable inboxes that can be used on sites that have spam potential or share data with advertisers, and another benefit worth mentioning is that the users can now protect their real email address from data breach incidents.
DuckDuckGo further explained the plan they have in a blog post saying that it “will never save your emails for this service” and that the messages are never stored on its systems but processed in memory.
We don’t save your emails.
We believe the content of your emails is none of our business, so DuckDuckGo will never save your emails for this service. We don’t need to! When we receive an email, we immediately remove trackers from it and then forward it to you, never saving it on our systems. We don’t even save the headers (e.g., to/from). Read more in our Privacy Guarantees.
The email protection service powered by DuckDuckGo is right now in private beta as issues are still being solved, but users can join a waitlist in order to join as new applications are accepted on a daily basis.
You won’t need to share any personal information to join the waitlist. You’ll secure your place in line with a timestamp that exists solely on your device, and we’ll notify you when we’re ready for you to join. Once you have a Personal Duck Address, you can expect DuckDuckGo to support it long-term so you can confidently share it from day one.
Dora is a digital marketing specialist within Heimdal™ Security. She is a content creator at heart - always curious about technology and passionate about finding out everything there is to know about cybersecurity.
