DuckDuckGo, the search engine that keeps your searches private, launched a revamped extension and mobile app that enable tracking protection and also grade websites based on how much they track you. The DuckDuckGo extension is available for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, while the app is available on iOS and Android


Privacy Essentials:

DuckDuckGo believes that various privacy and anti-tracking tools out there don’t offer your enough privacy protections or don’t show you the complete picture for how websites track you.

This is why beyond blocking trackers, the new DuckDuckGo tools allow you to search privately in your browser (by replacing Google in Chrome, for instance). The company has also partnered with TOSDR (Terms of Service; Didn’t Read), another service that rates websites based on how much they really care about your privacy, to integrate their score into DuckDuckGo’s own grading.

The new DuckDuckGo extension and app will also send you to the HTTPS version of websites by default, even if you were trying to visit the non-encrypted address. This feature should also serve in protecting users against against man-in-the-middle attacks. Essentially, it offers the same type of protection EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere does.