DuckDuckGo Brings App Tracking Protection to Android: How to Use It

For some time now DuckDuckGo has made a name for itself with its popular browser that cares about yours privacybut the company has gone even further, and has started rolling out 360° services that help users stay in control of their data.

One of them is App Tracking Protection (Data Tracking Protection), a tool launched a year ago for android in beta version limited to a few users and which allows, free of charge, to block tracking of third parties within the apps, even when these are not actively used.

Now DuckDuckGo opened App Tracking Protection to all users who want to test it, always in beta. Let’s see how to use it.

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What is Data Tracking Protection

As we anticipated, Data tracking protection allows you to block tracking by apps and works through the DuckDuckGo browserwhere, after being enabled, it detects when apps are about to send data to a list of third-party tracking companies on the blocklist (publicly available) of society.

At this point, it blocks most requests, without routing the data to DuckDuckGo’s servers.

DuckDuckGo also offers a reportcalled Activity Report, which shows what has blocked (image above), particularly enlightening (it’s disturbing). In fact, it can be seen that the apps carry out a real profiling activity, collecting the precise locationL’ageemail address, phone number, time zone, device information (including screen resolution, device make and model, language and local Internet provider), and even theFingerprint of the phone.

This information can then be sold to companies such as data brokers, advertisers and even governments, as well as being used by companies such as Half and Google to create specific advertising profiles.

According to DuckDuckGo, the average user has 35 apartments installed on the phone, and undergoes between 1,000 and 2,000 attempts to tracking from over 70 different tracking companies every day.

If this feature looks similar to the one introduced by Apple with iOS 15 (ATT), you are not alone, but there is a substantial difference.

According to Kamyl Bazbaz, vice president of communications at DuckDuckGo, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency tool”it only restricts direct access to IDFA [Identifier for Advertisers] of a user, the rest is essentially an honor system, where Apple asks developers to respect the user’s choice not to track, but in reality it’s not blocking any trackers of third parties. App Tracking Protection instead directly blocks third-party trackers, making the tool more powerful than the one available on iOS“.

How to use Data Tracking Protection

Using the function is very simple. All you need is to install the latest browser version DuckDuckGo and enable a setting.

1. Download DuckDuckGo (version 5.143.1) on your Android device
2. Start the app
3. It will ask you to be set as the default browser. You can decline and continue using the app.
4. Touch the menu with three dots top right
5. Touch Settings.
6. Scroll down and tap App tracking protection.
7. Touch Keep on until you see and can touch Turn on app tracking protection.
8. Give consent to configure your own Local VPN.

Within one minute of activating the app Data tracking protectionyou will notice that numerous attempts to tracking they have been blocked.

If you tap on an app, DuckDuckGo will deliver information about the third party companies receiving i your data and what they collect.