I’ve been using DuckDuckGo on mobile for a while now, since hearing about the feature that keeps your other apps from sharing your data with each other. Aside from that, DuckDuckGo is a browser and a search engine, without the targeted advertising of its competitors.
This is both their appeal and their business model: they don’t collect your personal information, and they don’t use it. The ads that they make money off of? Paired to be on-subject with what you’re currently searching, not some behind-the-scenes profile of who you are and everything you like. Truthfully, I’d have swapped them in as my primary on desktop a long time ago, if only switching browsers wasn’t so tedious.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t! Once I finally plucked up the courage to transfer my digital life, I found out that DuckDuckGo has an “import bookmarks and passwords” option, which did most of the work for me! Since then, I’ve discovered that the desktop version also blocks tracking attempts, pop-ups, and most cookies, and has an omnipresent fire button with which you can wipe out all cookies, caches, browser history, and permissions, except on websites you’ve specifically and deliberately fireproofed. (The mobile version has this too!)
I’ve been further and perhaps most delighted by Duck Player, however. Privacy and self-determination are all well and good, but can they hold a candle to watching YouTube videos without the ads?! The answer is yet to be determined.
