from the I'm-Sure-It's-All-It's-Quacket-Up-To-Be dept.
DuckDuckGo now offers anti-tracking email service to everyone:
DuckDuckGo's tracker-removing email service, which has been available in private beta for a year, is now open to anyone who uses a DuckDuckGo mobile app, browser extension, or Mac browser. It has also added a few more privacy tools.
The service provides you a duck.com email address, one intended to be given out for the kind of "Subscribe to our newsletter for 20 percent off" emails you know exist only to harvest data and target you for ads. Email sent to your duck.com address forwards to your chosen primary email—but with trackers removed.
Email Protection now also fixes up links, strips them of tracking modifiers, upgrades unencrypted HTTP URLs to HTTPS where possible, and, for the rare necessary reply, allows you to send directly from your duck address instead of exposing your primary email. During their closed beta, DuckDuckGo claims that 85 percent of the emails it processed contained hidden trackers.
[...] In my experience, using the company's apps, extensions, or browser isn't necessary to keep the email forwarding service running, but they allow you to autofill your duck address and create more individual throwaway email addresses, which is handy for email filtering.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 27 2022, @03:19PM (2 children)
So far, it seems that the Duck privacy mail does about the same thing as "don't download images" in most other online email. All that I've seen are those magic pixel trackers.
Mind that I've not done extensive research, nor have I signed up to shady sites just to test the system. But, Duck routinely strips those tracking pixels.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Saturday August 27 2022, @03:29PM
Might also sanitise URLs - most marketing emails have links that include a UUID identifying the originating email and redirecting to the target website.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2022, @07:47PM
Doesn't matter, it won't be long before another secret deal with Microsoft, et al will be uncovered. And besides, they still have to retain data to comply with various government NSLs
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ShovelOperator1 on Saturday August 27 2022, @07:55PM (1 child)
The advertisers will just block the entire domain from acceptable e-mails. What they did with 10minutemail, guerillamail, sharklasers and many small, local providers.
Unfortunately, the federated nature of e-mail backfired when it fell in hands of Internet monopolies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday August 28 2022, @03:20PM
It's a serious problem - I run two of my own email servers, and it's a hassle to send to people on a lot of the big email providers.
But I suspect DuckDuckGo might be big enough to win this. That is, if vendors start blocking duck.com emails they might cause the vendors more problems than benefits. We can only hope.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Mongo on Sunday August 28 2022, @01:18AM (1 child)
If SN stopped tracking my emails, I would appreciate it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday August 28 2022, @05:13AM
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday August 28 2022, @11:08PM
Why not use the anti-tracking service from the person who harvested and sold off a ton of user data? Seems like a great idea.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!