Understanding DuckDuckGo: Can You Trust Its Security Features?

What is DuckDuckGo Search?

DuckDuckGo is asearch engine , similar to Google or Bing.

However, it separates itself from the others by being one of the few search engines online that promises not to collect personal information about you. It doesn’t sell your search data to advertisers, and it won’t use your search history to alter your search results.

Is DuckDuckGo Safe?

The primary selling point of DuckDuckGo is that it offers its users true online privacy. Not only does it avoid tracking your online activity, but it also has embedded tools to protect you from privacy tracking conducted by the sites you visit.

If you’re like many other internet users and are concerned about how much your internet activities are being searched and used for advertising or other purposes, DuckDuckGo may be the perfect solution.

The following are the main privacy features included when you use DuckDuckGo.

• Doesn’t store your computer’s IP address.
• No cookies with tracking information are stored on your computer.
• Your search history isn’t logged or stored on DuckDuckGo servers.
• DuckDuckGo doesn’t sell your search activity to any third-party advertisers.
• Conversations using the browser’s AI chat portal aren’t saved.

These are often enough reasons for many users to switch over entirely to using DuckDuckGo as their search engine of choice.

However, the DuckDuckGo search engine provides additional features beyond security alone that makes it a better choice.

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How DuckDuckGo Search Results Differ from Competitors

On top of the security and privacy reasons for using the DuckDuckGo search engine, there are also other reasons to consider using it. Of those, we like DuckDuckGo because it doesn’t spin search results based on previous search history or corporate goals.

That means that everyone who uses the search engine to search for any given term will see the same results because the engine just finds the most relevant content to what you just typed in.

DuckDuckGo doesn’t attempt to bias top results toward its own products and services like Google does. You’ll see the best results for your search, without any other alternative agendas.

Google, on the other hand, doesn’t just use your browsing activity for advertising. It also incorporates your search history into every search result.

This means that no two people will see the same first page of search results. While this may seem like a good thing, it can also limit your perception of what other people see on the internet.

Most other search engines work on the same premise that Google does, which means DuckDuckGo is a rare bird that strives to give you the results you actually want, period.

DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg.

Washington Post/Contributor/Getty

DuckDuckGo Has Some Cool Features

Many people think that switching to the DuckDuckGo search engine means losing embedded features like getting calculation results in the search field or launching an embedded stopwatch. That’s not the case.

The DuckDuckGo offers all of the following embedded features from right inside the search field.

• Search sites : Use**!** to search external sites, or**@** or**!@ profile_name** to search external social profiles.
• Expand short URLs : Use “expand” to expand a short URL before you click it, or “shorten” to shorten your own URL.
• Password generator : Type “password” followed by a number to generate a strong password with that many characters.
• Stopwatch : Type “timer” to use the embedded stopwatch/timer feature.
• Website down : Type “is [site] down” (inserting the site) to learn whether a website is down for all other users and not just you.
• Rhyme check : Type “rhymes with [word]“ (inserting the word) to see a list of words that rhyme with yours.
• Calendar : Type “calendar” to see today’s day highlighted in the current month.
• Loan calculator : Type “loan [amount] at [interest rate] with [percent down] down for [length of loan] to see how much your monthly payments will be.

In other words, you aren’t giving up everything when switching to DuckDuckGo. There may be Google features you’ll have to live without, but hopefully, the important ones are included in the list above. You also won’t have to go without Featured Snippets (Instant Answers in DuckDuckGo), business directions via Bing Maps or Google Maps, or image, video, and news. You can even use theDuckDuckGo Maps results .

In June 2024, the company added a free-to-use AI chat portal that works with ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo, Claude 3 Haiku, Llama 3, and Mixtral 8x7B. While you use outside platforms, DuckDuckGo anonymizes your chats. They’re quick to delete, and the company says your threads won’t train other models.

Using the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser

If you value privacy above all else, consider using the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser for Android orDuckDuckGo Privacy Browser for iOS.

If you want the same DuckDuckGo privacy controls embedded into your favorite desktop browser, you can install the DuckDuckGo browser extension for Chrome or the DuckDuckGo browser extension for Firefox.

All of these block third-party trackers, enforce site encryption, and of course, give you instant access to DuckDuckGo’s privacy search engine.

DuckDuckGo isn’t for everyone. If you demand all of the advanced features and personalized search results offered by Google, you probably won’t want to switch. But if your privacy and security is your top priority, then DuckDuckGo could be your best option.

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