Is the DuckDuckGo Anti-Tracking Tool More Secure than iOS?

DuckDuckGo, a Privacy oriented search site has added yet another way to prevent more of your data from going to advertisers, opening its App Tracking Protection for Android to beta testers.

DuckDuckGo is positioning App Tracking Protection as something like Apple's App Tracking Transparency for iOS devices, but "even more powerful."

It enables the service in the DuckDuckGo app for Android (under the "More from DuckDuckGo" section) to install a local VPN service on your phone, which can then start automatically blocking trackers on DDG's public blocklist. It all happens without sending app data to DuckDuckGo or other remote servers, says DuckDuck Go.

DuckDuckGo's App Tracking Protection shows you specifics on what your Android apps are trying to send.

Google recently gave Android users some native tools to prevent wanton tracking, including app-by-app location-tracking approval and a limited native ad-tracking opt-out. Apple's App Tracking Transparency asks if users want to block apps from accessing the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), but apps can still use the largest tracking networks across many apps to better profile app users.

App Tracking Protection needs Android's VPN permission so it can monitor network traffic. When it recognizes a tracker from its blocklist, it "looks at the destination domain for any outbound request and blocks them if they are in our blocklist and the requesting app is not owned by the same company that owns the domain," said Allison Goodman, senior communications manager at DuckDuckGo, reported Ars Technica.

App Tracking Protection has launched a year ago in a limited beta. Since then, DuckDuckGo has updated the app to show you more information about what kinds of data trackers are trying to collect—"like your precise location, age, and a digital fingerprint of your phone."

Further, through its testing, DuckDuckGo has seen that an Android phone with 35 apps can see 1,000–2,000 tracking attempts every day, sending data to more than 70 companies.