DuckDuckGo's Very Fast, Private Desktop Browser

Built from the ground up to respect your privacy across the entire internet.

DuckDuckGo started life as a search engine that respected your privacy, but now it's going far beyond that by developing a web browser to respect your privacy across the entire web.

Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo, published a round-up blog post of what his company has achieved over the course of 2021. They include improvements to the DuckDuckGo mobile app, the introduction of Email Protection for free email forwarding and tracker removal, App Tracking Protection to stop trackers in other Android apps, and a new design with better results for the DuckDuckGo search engine.

The most interesting news comes at the end of the blog post, though. Weinberg reveals that a DuckDuckGo desktop web browser is being worked on, which he describes as "not a "privacy browser"; it's an everyday browsing app that respects your privacy because there's never a bad time to stop companies from spying on your search and browsing history."

Unlike other browsers, Weinberg decided against forking an existing project such as Chromium (like Microsoft did for the Edge browser). Instead, the desktop app will use the rendering engine provided by each operating system it runs on, so that should include Windows, macOS, and Linux. By doing so, Weinberg says the DuckDuckGo browser can "strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers."

It's the same approach taken for the DuckDuckGo mobile app, and it promises to offer a very slick experience, as well as allowing users to relax about their privacy being protected. There will also be a "Fire Button," which has become popular on mobile devices as a quick (and animated) way to clear all your tabs and browsing data with a single tap or click.

And as for performance, the desktop web browser may only be in early testing, but according to Weinberg it's already "significantly faster" than Chrome.

Credit: pcmag.com

Verizon Customers: Check Your Privacy Settings - ASAP

A new 'Verizon Custom Experience' update is automatically tracking your data, location, and contacts.

Verizon customers take note: One of the telecom giant’s latest, seemingly bland email blasts contains some potentially major privacy changes under the guise of a more “tailored” service.

A new program innocuously titled the “Verizon Custom Experience” is sold to users as a way for the company to “personalize our communications with you, give you more relevant product and service recommendations, and develop plans, services and offers that are more appealing to you.” To accomplish this, all a Verizon subscriber needs to do is... allow the company access to all the websites you visit, apps you use, as well as see everyone you happen to call and text.

Well, okay, so that’s a bit misleading. You don’t “need” to allow access, Verizon already default granted it. However, you can manually go in and change a few settings to remedy the situation, though. Here’s how.

Easy to overlook, but easy to fix. All one needs to do is log in to their Verizon mobile account, then go to privacy settings. From there, you can toggle all of your data sharing options and read Verizon’s more detailed explanation of each service. Those managing more than one line on their accounts can also disable the features on each separate number, as well. It’s a small move, but definitely one to consider, data is tracked enough these days.

The announcement email from your smartphone provider is easy to miss and get tossed into the trash folder. That may be what Verizon is counting on here, because it doesn’t take long to realize the new “personalization” system is really just a giant data collection scheme. Although Verizon promises that all your information remains in-house and will not be sold to any third parties, the company already encompasses enough to make this an unappealing prospect.

Luckily, it’s pretty quick and easy to disable your Custom Experience.

Credit: inputmag.com

Tracker Pixels In Emails Are Now An ‘Endemic’ Privacy Concern

Critics suggest the practice is marketing gone too far.

Invisible pixels used to track email activity are now an "endemic" issue that breaches our privacy, analysts suggest.

This week, the Hey messaging service analyzed its traffic following a request from the BBC and discovered that roughly two-thirds of emails sent to its users' private email accounts contained what is known as a "spy pixel."

Spy pixels, also known as tracking pixels or web beacons, are invisible, tiny image files (including .PNGs and .GIFs) that are inserted in the content body of an email.

They may appear as clear, white, or another color to merge with the content and remain unseen by a recipient and are often as small as 1x1 pixels.

The recipient of an email does not need to directly engage with the pixel in any way for it to track certain activities. Instead, when an email is opened, the tracking pixel is automatically downloaded,  and this lets a server, owned by a marketer, know that the email has been read. Servers may also record the number of times an email is opened, the IP address linked to a user's location, and device usage. Similar pixels are also widely used on web domains to track visitors.

Tracking pixels have been around for some time but are not well-known. For marketers, pixels can be an invaluable method to measure engagement levels, estimate the success of marketing campaigns, and potentially to send follow-ups and more personalized notes when a message has been read, but not responded to.

However, according to Hey co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson, they also represent a "grotesque invasion of privacy." Hansson told the publication that on average, the company processes one million emails and over 600,000 pixel tracker attempts are blocked every day. If you bring these levels up to the millions and millions of emails processed by services such as Gmail or Outlook, the suggestion that pixel tracker usage is "endemic" may be realistic.

In Europe, GDPR demands that organizations tell recipients of the use of such pixels. However, the water has been muddied surrounding the transparency necessary to implement pixel tracking, as consent is not always required -- and when it is, this could be 'obtained' automatically when a user signs up to an email service and is asked to read a privacy notice published on a website.

The UK's own Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which acts as a data protection watchdog, uses pixels to track email openings in its newsletter, as noted by the publication. Users are clearly told of the trackers at sign-up; however, the ICO intends to remove this functionality soon.

It is possible to prevent tracking pixels from triggering by disallowing automatic image uploads in your web browser, or by downloading email and browser add-ons to block trackers.

Credit: zdnet.com

What Facebook Isn’t Saying - It's The Only Part That Matters

Listen Carefully to What Facebook Isn’t Saying About Apple’s Upcoming Privacy Change.

Instead of creating a better product, it's trying to create a bad guy.

Facebook has said a lot about Apple's upcoming privacy changes, due to arrive with the next update of iOS 14. That change will require app developers to request permission before they track users. Facebook takes particular issue with this since its business is almost entirely based on tracking what users do online and then showing them what it calls "personalized ads."

Clearly, Facebook views those changes as an existential threat. To that end, Facebook has accused Apple of attacking small businesses, of having self-serving motivation for making the change, and even of favoring its own apps over third-parties. I think we could debate each of those things, but honestly, what's much more interesting, is what Facebook isn't saying.

Facebook is trying to create the narrative that Apple is doing something nefarious that is targeting Facebook's business and hurting small businesses. What Apple is really doing is simply giving users a choice over whether they want to be tracked.

Facebook knows that a lot of people don't want to be tracked at all. Everyone has had the experience of looking for something online, only to have an ad appear for the exact pair of shoes you were looking at. Even worse is that often people don't even remember looking something up, they just thought about it, or had a conversation with their partner - and now they're seeing ads on Facebook.

No, Facebook isn't listening to your conversations - it doesn't need to. It just knows that much about you because it tracks you across the internet and even the apps on your smartphone. If all of that seems a little creepy, you can understand why the company doesn't want you thinking about it. In fact, the only reason they get away with it at this point is that most people aren't.

And, that's the point: Facebook doesn't want people thinking about it at all.

But Facebook can't say that, because it would require admitting that it realizes people think all of that tracking is creepy. Facebook doesn't want to be the bad guy in this story, so it had to create one - Apple. You know, the company that wants to give you a choice over whether you'll be tracked.

By the way, Apple isn't saying that Facebook, or any other app for that matter, shouldn't track you. It's just saying they should have to ask permission. Even that goes too far for Facebook because it knows that - if given a choice - a non-zero number of its users will opt to not allow the social media app to track them.

Think about that for a minute - Facebook knows that some number of people that it is currently tracking, would rather the company didn't. The only reason it gets away with it is that they either don't know it's happening, or they don't know they have a choice.

When given the choice, they'll decide they no longer want Facebook to scoop up their browsing activity. Sure, there's probably a lot of people who very well may not care at all. They may be perfectly fine with being tracked. They may even value the personalized ads. They should still have a choice.

The thing is, Facebook isn't making a case for that either. Instead of trying to solve the problem by coming up with a better product that doesn't invade people's privacy or creep them out, Facebook is trying to figure out how to keep it all a secret. It doesn't want to talk about that part - at all.

Instead of acknowledging that some people might not be comfortable with that level of privacy, it's trying to distract its users by pointing at how terrible Apple's decision is for small businesses - many of whom, by the way, were around long before you could advertise on Facebook.

Maybe that's the part it really doesn't want to talk about.

Credit: inc.com

This Free Service Is A Way To Foil Spam And Protect Your Privacy

Don’t give your information to marketers who might pelt you with spam or even expose you to a potential hack. Use Abine Blur instead, a service that generates a free “masked email” address, to use instead of your real one The service will forward messages to your actual Gmail (or other) inbox and you can cut off any future emails with one click.

Edited from an article by Jared Newman at

I started using Abine Blur about five months ago, after hearing about it from one of my newsletter readers, and it’s since become one of my most cherished privacy services. With masked email addresses, I don’t have to worry about getting spammed just because I signed up for an app, made a donation, or subscribed to some retailer’s newsletter in exchange for a coupon. I just tell Abine Blur to stop forwarding their emails, and our link is severed.

While the idea of avoiding spam through masked or secondary email addresses has been around for a long time, Abine Blur stands out for being easy to use across multiple websites, each with their own separate addresses. It’s a simple way to protect an important part of your online privacy, yet it seems to fly under the radar compared to flashier tools like ad blockers or VPNs.

The main reason to use masked email is obvious: Given the chance, too many companies will abuse the privilege of having your email address, sending endless marketing messages without your explicit permission.

The United States doesn’t have a law like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which requires opt-in consent for companies to email you. In the U.S., when you turn over your email address while signing up for a service or buying something online, that address becomes fair game for marketing. Here, the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act does require marketers to include opt-out mechanisms in their emails, but those unsubscribe options can be hard to find. Besides, I’ve been on enough seemingly inescapable mailing lists to know that the law isn’t always followed to the letter, and unsubscribing from one list won’t help if a company has handed your email address to a third party.

Beyond just the immediate privacy violation of having your inbox invaded, handing out your email can also be a security risk. Just type your email address into the long-running security checkup site Have I Been Pwned, and you’ll likely see that it’s been involved in all kinds of security breaches. Scammers can then use your email and any corresponding personal information from the breach in phishing attempts, which try to trick you into turning over even more sensitive information such as passwords or bank account details.

In the same way that you’d change your password after a security breach, a masked email would let you change your email address as well. If an app or website that you use gets hacked, you can just switch to a different masked email and dispose of the old one, and scammers would have no way of contacting you.

Creating email addresses in Abine Blur is pretty easy. After setting up an account, just head to the masked email menu and select “New Masked Email.” You can then specify what you’re using the address for, which will help you easily disable emails from that site or service later.

For each masked email, Abine Blur uses a jumble of 12 random letters and numbers, along with one of several possible domain names, so you’ll get an address like: 

9860nu90ed5n@opayq.com   or   i5qpqjmc7c22@blurme.net

You can then copy the email address and paste it into any sign-up form.

If that seems like too much trouble, Abine Blur also has browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. (The former is also compatible with other Chromium-based browsers, such as Microsoft Edge or Brave.) Once installed, the extension will automatically detect sign-up forms and offer to generate masked email addresses automatically. You can also generate and copy email addresses through Blur’s iOS and Android apps.

After setting up a masked email, any messages to that address will arrive in your inbox with a message from Abine Blur at the top, with a “Block” button you can click to stop any future emails from arriving. Abine Blur’s website and apps also have a section for blocking and unblocking addresses or deleting your masked email addresses outright.

It’s worth noting that Abine Blur offers other privacy tools, such as masked credit cards, masked phone numbers, and a password manager, but some of those features require a paid subscription starting at $39 per year. Personally, I just use the masked email feature, which is free and has no limits on the number of addresses you can create. (On that note, if you’re using the browser extension, I suggest clicking on the extension button, heading to Settings > Settings for All Sites, and disabling any Abine Blur features you don’t use.)

Abine Blur isn’t the only service that can mask your email address. You can also generate temporary email addresses with services such as  Maildrop or 10 Minute Mail, or rely on the time-worn practice of keeping a second email address for junk. In Gmail, you can also add dots or plus symbols to your username in email forms, then set up filtering rules so that emails to those modified addresses don’t land in your inbox. Even Apple now offers masked email addresses with its Sign in With Apple feature, which you can use to create an account in some apps and services.

But compared to those methods, Abine Blur is simpler to use. I don’t have to worry about checking a second inbox or wasting time with Gmail filters, and unlike Sign in With Apple, it works with virtually any app or website. (Some sites do block Abine Blur’s email domains, but I’ve yet to be thwarted by this myself.)

That ease of use makes me more likely to use the service in the first place. After months of doing so, I’m wondering how I went so long without it.