DuckDuckGo

SEARCH & BROWSERS

LAST UPDATED 3 AUG 2026

OF 100

PARANOIA SCORE

WHAT THE POLICIES SAY

DuckDuckGo's own privacy policy and help pages describe an architecture built to avoid retaining individually linkable search or browsing histories, and the company states it has never sold personal information. Independent reporting from 2022 documented a technical exception that let Microsoft-owned tracking scripts operate in the DuckDuckGo browser on non-DuckDuckGo sites, a gap the company narrowed after public scrutiny, illustrating a case where a commercial search-syndication partnership limited an otherwise strict default-blocking posture. Ownership is disclosed at a high level as founder-majority-controlled and independent of Google or other large platforms, though the company does not publish a full investor cap table.

TIMELINE

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RECEIPTS

16 ON FILE

COLLECTION

DuckDuckGo's App Store privacy-label help page states the company collects only the minimum amount of anonymous, non-linked data needed to build and maintain its privacy products.

duckduckgo.com ↗

COLLECTION

DuckDuckGo's privacy policy states that visiting its search engine or other websites causes a user's device to automatically send certain technical information such as IP address, browser type, and language.

duckduckgo.com ↗

[2020-06-23] · COLLECTION

As assessed by PrivacySpy on 2020-06-23 (see PrivacySpy's rubric entry for this product for the per-claim citation): Does the service collect personal data from third parties? — No.

privacyspy.org ↗

OWNERSHIP TRANSPARENCY

DuckDuckGo's own help pages state that the company has been independent since its 2008 founding and is majority-owned by its founder, Gabriel Weinberg, and team members.

duckduckgo.com ↗

OWNERSHIP TRANSPARENCY

DuckDuckGo's help pages explicitly deny that the company is or has ever been owned by Google or any other entity.

duckduckgo.com ↗

[2020-06-23] · OWNERSHIP TRANSPARENCY

As assessed by PrivacySpy on 2020-06-23 (see PrivacySpy's rubric entry for this product for the per-claim citation): Will affected users be notified when the policy is meaningfully changed? — N/A.

privacyspy.org ↗

SHARING

DuckDuckGo's privacy policy states that the company has never sold personal information.

duckduckgo.com ↗

[2020-06-23] · SHARING

As assessed by PrivacySpy on 2020-06-23 (see PrivacySpy's rubric entry for this product for the per-claim citation): Does the policy allow personally-targeted or behavioral marketing? — No.

privacyspy.org ↗

[2022-05-27] · SHARING

In May 2022, reporting on security researcher Zach Edwards's findings, republished by Business Today, stated that the DuckDuckGo browser did not stop certain data flows to Microsoft's LinkedIn and Bing advertising domains.

businesstoday.in ↗

TRACK RECORD

DuckDuckGo published the results of a second Securitum engagement, a targeted no-log policy audit of the DuckDuckGo VPN conducted between October 2025 and January 2026 involving a technical inspection, a source code review of proprietary components and live system analysis, which DuckDuckGo states validated its no-logs policy.

duckduckgo.com ↗

TRACK RECORD

DuckDuckGo's own VPN security help page states that the company engages independent cybersecurity firm Securitum for periodic audits of the DuckDuckGo VPN and publishes the resulting reports, and the page links to two published audits to date (2024 and 2025-2026).

duckduckgo.com ↗

TRACK RECORD

DuckDuckGo publishes EU Digital Services Act transparency reports for defined reporting periods (a PDF covering 17 February to 31 December 2024 and separate Search, Duck.ai and VPN reports covering 1 January to 31 December 2025), alongside a semi-annual table of estimated EU monthly active recipients (for example 22.2MM +/-1.6MM for DuckDuckGo Search for the period ending 30 June 2026).

duckduckgo.com ↗

[2022-05-25] · TRACK RECORD

In May 2022, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg publicly acknowledged, in response to a security researcher's findings reported by BleepingComputer, that a Microsoft search-syndication agreement limited the company's ability to block Microsoft-owned tracking scripts in its browser.

bleepingcomputer.com ↗

[2022-08-05] · TRACK RECORD

On 5 August 2022, DuckDuckGo published its own announcement remediating the Microsoft-tracker gap acknowledged in May 2022: it expanded its 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection to block third-party Microsoft tracking scripts in its iOS and Android browsing apps and its Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and Opera extensions, stating that the Bing-syndication policy requirement that had previously constrained this was no longer in place, and that it had made its tracker protection list public.

spreadprivacy.com ↗

[2024-10-22] · TRACK RECORD

DuckDuckGo published the results of a third-party security audit of its VPN and supporting infrastructure carried out by the firm Securitum from 1 to 22 October 2024, disclosing fifteen reported issues (none critical, two high-risk, four medium-risk, nine low-risk), the six it fixed including all high and medium-risk issues, and the low-risk findings it chose to accept; DuckDuckGo states on the same page that it plans to conduct external security audits of the VPN regularly.

duckduckgo.com ↗

TRACKING TECH

DuckDuckGo's web tracking protections help page discloses that its browser is not always able to block third-party tracking requests when doing so would break website functionality.

duckduckgo.com ↗

DATA SOURCES

PrivacySpy

CC BY · PRIVACYSPY.ORG ↗

Claims are summarized from these sources and may be edited from the original.

LAST REVIEWED 2026-08-03 · METHODOLOGY v1.7