Now Microsoft is also blocked in DuckDuckGo

Earlier this year, a security researcher revealed that the DuckDuckGo browser on Android and iOS did not block tracking from Microsoft. DuckDuckGo founder and president, Gabriel Weinberg, was quick to blame the company’s agreement with Microsoft.

After a lot of complaining Including on reddit The company will now start including Microsoft script blocking in its browsers on iOS and Android, as well as browser extensions for DuckDuckGo in Chrome, Fireox, Safari, Edge and Opera over the next few weeks. Beta apps should also block scripts from Microsoft, but that won’t happen until the next few months, Weinberg writes in a blog post.

In the same blog post, he also explained that they have restrictions on how Microsoft can block scripts as a result of an agreement with the company because they use Bing as the source for their search results. They have now managed to take this out of the agreement. At the same time, they state that they do not have or have any similar agreement with any other company.

anonymous ads

Weinberg made it clear in his blog post that he does not share any information with Microsoft. It explains in detail what they do with the company. In addition to using Bing as a search source, they also have an advertising agreement with Microsoft. Microsoft has an agreement that it will not profile users of DuckDuckGo. Weinberg wrote in the blog:

When you click on a Microsoft advertising link that appears on DuckDuckGo, Microsoft Advertising does not associate your click with a user profile. Nor does it store or share the information for other uses.

However, the DuckDuckGo script blocker does not block the link to bat.bing.com. This is a script that is used to measure clicks, and the advertiser will not see any more data than that there have been x number of interactions with a user from DuckDuckGo. In other words, only the number of clicks from ads from the search engine is shared. The company is now working on an alternative way to share this information with advertiser customers so they don’t have to rely on Microsoft solutions. It is also possible for DuckDuckGo users to block the bat.bing.com script if they wish in the DuckDuckGo settings.