DuckDuckGo now offers an anti-tracking email service for everyone

DuckDuckGo, an email service to remove trackers that’s been in private beta for a year, is now open to anyone who uses the DuckDuckGo mobile app, browser extension, or Mac browser. It also added a few more privacy tools.

The Service provides you with a duck.com email address for “Subscribe to our 20% off newsletter” messages, which you know exist only to collect data and target you with advertising. Email sent to your duck.com address is redirected to the primary email address of your choice, but with trackers removed.

Email Protection now also fixes links, strips them of tracking modifiers, updates unencrypted HTTP URLs to HTTPS where possible, and, for the rare necessary responses, lets you send directly from your duck address instead of revealing your primary email. During its closed beta testing, DuckDuckGo claims that 85 percent of emails it processed contained hidden trackers.

To sign up for email protection, you’ll need either the DuckDuckGo mobile app for iOS or Androidto use DuckDuckGo browser extension in or use Firefox, Chrome, Edge or Brave Mac browser beta (the list for which must be attached in the DuckDuckGo mobile application).

In my own experience, using the company’s apps, extensions, or browser is not required to get your email forwarding service working, but they allow you to auto-populate your duck address and create more separate disposable email addresses, which is handy for email filtering.

DuckDuckGo notes that trackers embedded in email images and links can transmit information to the sender about when you opened the message, your geolocation when you opened it, and what device you used. Knowing your primary email address can also allow companies to connect it to Facebook and Google and target you with ads on various sites.

The company helpfully notes that it won’t track you itself with Tracking Protection. “When your Duck Addresses receive an email, we immediately apply our tracking protection and then forward it to you, never storing it in our systems. Sender information, subject lines… we don’t track any of that,” the company wrote on its blog. DuckDuckGo is also “committed to protecting email for the long term” and says it has worked to support millions of users during closed beta testing.

List image from DuckDuckGo