DuckDuckGo is launching a new email privacy service designed to prevent advertising companies from snooping on their users’ inboxes. The company’s new email protection feature provides users with a free @duck.com email address that will be forwarded to the user’s regular inbox after analyzing the email content for trackers and deleting them.
DuckDuckGo is still extending this functionality with unique, one-time forwarding addresses, which can be generated in DuckDuckGo’s mobile browser or through desktop browser extensions. A one-time address is more appropriate for signing up for a free trial, newsletter, or wherever you suspect an email address might be sold because you can easily deactivate it if you find an email address has been compromised.
These tools are similar to the anti-tracking features Apple implemented in iOS 14 and iOS 15, but DuckDuckGo’s method is integrated into iOS, Android, and all major web browsers. DuckDuckGo also makes it easier to create a one-time e-mail address at will, for communication or any place where e-mail may be shared.
Solving email privacy issues has always been a major goal of DuckDuckGo, as the company promotes privacy-friendly methods for various online tasks. The company started with its eponymous DuckDuckGo search engine and recently launched its own mobile browser and desktop browser extensions to remove trackers while surfing the Internet.
According to a highly cited study in 2017, mail trackers exist in more than 70% of mailing lists. Once implemented, they will allow advertisers to figure out when you opened the email, where you were when you opened it, and the device you were using. Removing trackers from emails can remove data points from mailing lists, thereby invisible from advertising archives, which has become a priority for privacy advocates in recent years.
Consumer research shows that it will be very difficult to ask people to switch to a brand new email address and provider. Therefore, the email protection tool is not to create a new email service but to act as an intermediate layer to protect users’ access to the inbox.
iPhone users may recognize the concept of relaying email addresses, a feature introduced by Apple in iOS 14 called Hide My Email. When registering an application through an Apple device, the iPhone can suggest a random Apple email address. Mail will be sent to this random address to prevent the application from knowing your real email address. In Apple’s iOS 15 system, the company is introducing similar features to obfuscate email trackers and protect privacy.
DuckDuckGo’s email protection is different from Apple’s products because it is cross-platform, which means that no matter whether it is mobile or desktops, such as computer, iPhone or Android, you can have a unified one-time email address experience. But its difference lies in the way the software intercepts the tracker.
Apple loads the tracker on its own server and sends the wrong information back to the tracker’s server. DuckDuckGo just deletes them directly from the email before they are loaded. For most users, this difference is negligible, but it is indeed a difference. Setting up the tool is very simple. Users register through DuckDuckGo’s mobile application, enter the settings page, and click Email Protection. They can then join the waiting list, and DuckDuckGo does not collect email addresses – it stores a timestamp in the app to specify the individual’s queuing order.
DuckDuckGo estimates that the waiting time will be a few weeks, after which users will receive a notification to set up this feature. The setup process includes some introduction to privacy features and choosing a new Duck.com email address.
DuckDuckGo will not see or save any emails; the deletion of the tracker is done in the memory (or RAM) of its server and has not been written to disk or hard drive. DuckDuckGo has also built forwarding software from the ground up, so it doesn’t have to rely on a third party to process emails between teammates before they reach your inbox.
