Browser technology and search engine maker, DuckDuckGo introduced late this week, a new initiative called Tracker Radar, a data-sharing service, detailing over 5,000 internet domains used by almost 2,000 firms and organizations that can track people online.
The said data, Vivaldi, a browser maker, Vivaldi said, can be accessed by anyone. According to Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo Founder and Chief Executive said, there will also be others employing the system and these include browsers which are more widely utilized than Vivaldi.
The data, as well as its adoption, depict the growing essentiality of privacy protection. More so, the online advertising industry is among the biggest privacy violators, creating profiles of people for it to target advertisements more effectively.
Relatively, Apple has been pushing for better privacy for quite some time already. And now, even today's biggest tech players like Facebook and Google claim, privacy is a priority, as well.
A survey by Cisco found that roughly 32% of the companies and organizations have taken some actions for their online privacy protection.
Such actions include the adoption of tracker-blocking browsers such as Microsoft's Edge, Apple Safari, Mozilla's Firefox, Brave Software's Brave, and the mobile browser,
DuckDuckGo offers for both iPhone and Android. Additionally, there are browser extensions like Ghostery, too, a Privacy Badger, and own choice of DuckDuckGo.
In 2019, people downloaded the browser extensions and browser of DuckDuckGo 20 million times and they so at a 100,000-per-day-rate at present.
A profitable firm, DuckDuckGo has over 80 employees powered by more than three million searchers this year.
As such, the company is attempting to cash in on what's trending. Additionally, this company's search results display adds which Microsoft supplies.
However, it bases those advertisements on one's search terms, instead of other online activities or gathering of personal information.
So, some wonder: if DuckDuckGo "is making money through privacy," why is it giving its Track Radar data away?
As a response, Weinberg recognizes that releasing data can 'cannibalize' its very own browser extension. This though is not the company's main priority. The main vision for the company, its executive said, is to increase and enhance the standard of trust and reliance online.
This particular vision, the official said, outdoes the potential income here.
Tracker Blocker, Website Breaker
Are you still confused by how the DuckDuckGo system works? It stops the trackers "by blocking browsers interactions along with monitoring of websites" may seem easy but the issues to privateness literacy remain.
Remarkably, blocking the tracker can lead to some issues with the websites, specifically stopping the playing of movies, preempting a user from completing e-commerce transactions, and interrupting login processes.
Users should not worry about the issue though, because DuckDuckGo checks them, and in its extensions and personal browsers, the search engine maker is also trying to work around the issues with code paving over the issues sans necessarily sharing private information online.
One will find different tracker knowledge sources, just as the Disconnect list and some browsers including Firefox and Edge are already using them.
DuckDuckGo collects its Tracker Radar knowledge through an analysis of a few websites.
