DuckDuckGo’s New Service Anonymizes Your Email Address

Condobloke

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And you thought DuckDuckGo was just a pretty face with a slightly weird name ?

Guess again


Invisible trackers can detect when and where you open a message
, and if you stick to a single email address, it’s very easy to build an advertising profile based on the websites, stores, and newsletters you sign up with.

Introducing Email Protection: The easy way to block email trackers and hide your address


Reading your email should be a private activity. You may be surprised to learn that 70% of emails contain trackers that can detect when you’ve opened a message, where you were when you opened it, and what device you were using.

If that isn’t creepy enough, this email data can be used to profile you, including to target you with ads, and influence the content you see online


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.
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My Note: This doesn't just work for websites/newsletters you are just joining now. This will strip all trackers from emails/newsletters sent to you by websites that you already belong to
It is probably a bit late because the sites will already hold your email address and a profile of you....but this will make their work that much harder and far less certain.

If you don't respond to any add that pops up (and you should never do that ), then uncertainty is introduced to the site/people tracking you. Suddenly the boot is on the other foot. THEY are now the ones in the uncertain position!
Continue using this protection for a number of months (forever...why not ?!)....and the ability of the trackers to positively identify you is severely limited. The people who pay them will only pay for positive results. The question becomes...what results? Your email is hidden. It may well not exist any more.

Food for thought? Have I got it right?
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Ever open an email and see a related ad about it soon thereafter? Yup, blame email trackers. This data about you is also usually sent directly to third parties, most likely without your consent.

The following information is a must read. It contains the "guts" of the detail. It answers most questions.

Our free email forwarding service removes email trackers and protects the privacy of your personal email address without asking you to change email services or apps.


Introducing Email Protection
We’re excited to announce the beta release of DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection. Our free email forwarding service removes email trackers and protects the privacy of your personal email address without asking you to change email services or apps. Most existing email privacy solutions come with significant tradeoffs. You either have to switch email services or apps entirely, or degrade your email experience by hiding all images. We believe protecting your personal information from leaking to third parties should be simple and seamless, like the rest of DuckDuckGo’s privacy protection bundle.

Email privacy, simplified.
Choose your Duck Email Address ([email protected]) and start giving it out. We remove hidden trackers from incoming emails sent to this address, then forward them to your regular inbox for safer reading. This means if you use an email service like Gmail or Yahoo, it’s no problem! Emails sent to your Personal Duck Address will arrive there as usual so you can read your email like normal, in any app or on the web, worry-free.

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We forward your emails after removing trackers. Same inbox, more privacy.
Get automatic Email Protection in the app. The DuckDuckGo app and extension provide easy access to your Personal Duck Address when browsing the web and also give you the option to generate new Private Duck Addresses on demand.

On sites you think could spam you or share your email address, a Private Duck Address will protect you. Since it’s common for sites to upload your email address to Google and Facebook for ad targeting, or for your email to be leaked in a data breach, this extra level of identity protection is now unfortunately necessary. You can think of it as similar to not reusing the same password everywhere. We’ve also made Private Duck Addresses easy to deactivate, so there’s no stress if you start receiving too much spam.

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Use a Private Duck Address when you don't trust a site to keep your information to themselves.We don't save your emails.
We believe the content of your emails is none of our business, so DuckDuckGo will never save your emails for this service. We don't need to! When we receive an email, we immediately remove trackers from it and then forward it to you, never saving it on our systems. We don’t even save the headers (e.g., to/from). Read more in our Privacy Guarantees.

Join the private beta waitlist.
We’re releasing our Email Protection feature into beta while we’re ironing out the wrinkles. To get access to the beta, just join the private waitlist! We're letting new people in every day, but the sooner you join, the sooner you'll be protecting your email privacy.

You won’t need to share any personal information to join the waitlist. You’ll secure your place in line with a timestamp that exists solely on your device, and we’ll notify you when we’re ready for you to join. Once you have a Personal Duck Address, you can expect DuckDuckGo to support it long-term so you can confidently share it from day one.

  1. Download DuckDuckGo for iOS or Android
  2. Open Settings > Beta Features > Email Protection
  3. Click “Join the Private Waitlist."

Having control over your privacy shouldn't be complicated or require tradeoffs. Our mission is to make it simple and stress free, for email and everything else you do online. It’s privacy, simplified.

Which companies hide trackers in your emails that capture personal information.?......

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....among others.
 

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