Privacy Pros: Provides better privacy options than Google and better QOL improvements over other search engines.
Privacy Cons: Parent company is Verizon. Uses fingerprinting to identify the user. Uses anonymous statistics to gather info. Uses info to train AI. Depends on Bing for search results. Proprietary and non-local code.
Privacy Tip: While the DuckDuckGo browser and/or extensions are decent, Librewolf and Iceraven offer better privacy and protection against fingerprinting. Turn on Librewolf’s letterboxing feature via about:config to prevent DuckDuckGo from fingerprinting your browser.
DuckDuckGo is an American software company focused on online privacy whose flagship product is a search engine named DuckDuckGo. Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, its later products include browser extensions and a custom DuckDuckGo web browser. Headquartered in Paoli, Pennsylvania, DuckDuckGo is a privately held company with about 200 employees. The company’s name is a reference to the children’s game duck, duck, goose.