Andrew Heinzman
Advertisers are finding more sophisticated ways to track your activity and interests through email. Invisible trackers can detect when, where, and how you open a message. And if you stick with a single email address, it’s advertisers can easily build a detailed profile based on your interests. The solution? Uh … DuckDuckGo?
Update, 8/25/22: The DuckDuckGo Email Protection Service is now open to everyone.
DuckDuckGo now offers an Email Protection service that anonymizes your primary email address. The way it works is very simple—you use a special @duck.com email address when signing up for websites or newsletters, and DuckDuckGo will forward all incoming messages to your regular email inbox.
These messages will be stripped of all trackers and forced to use HTTPS before they’re forwarded to you. And because websites or advertisers only have your @duck.com address, they will never know your primary email address.
Additionally, DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service can generate an intermediary email address on the fly. It’s the same idea as Apple’s Hide My Email tool—when you click the email text field of a website, DuckDuckGo will generate and suggest a unique email address. (And you can close or manage these intermediary addresses at any time.)
DuckDuckGo Email Protection launched with a waitlist last year. While the program is still in “beta,” the waitlist is gone, so anyone can sign up and use Email Protection using the DuckDuckGo extension or DuckDuckGo mobile browser.
If you’re using the browser extension, simply visit the DuckDuckGo Email page. Mobile users need to open the DuckDuckGo browser, navigate to “Settings,” and select “Email Protection.” Note that you may need to update the mobile browser first.
Source: DuckDuckGo
