DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
Simple and seamless privacy protection for your browser.
What is DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials?
DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials is a user-friendly Chrome extension engineered to shield your online privacy. With features including tracker blocking, enforced encryption, email protection, cookie blocking among others, it outperforms the privacy protection offered by most popular browsers. The extension also sets DuckDuckGo as your default search engine for anonymized browsing and shields against new tracking technologies rolled out by Google. DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials aims to simplify privacy and make it the default online experience for users.

Stats
- contextMenus
- webRequest
- webRequestBlocking
- *://*/*
- webNavigation
- activeTab
- tabs
- storage
- <all_urls>
- alarms See more
Chrome-Stats Rank
Other platforms

Summary
Protecting your privacy online is like protecting your home. Locking the front door won’t stop the most determined folks from getting inside, especially if you’ve left the back door and windows unlocked and an extra key under the doormat. That’s why we offer multiple types of privacy protection, all with the single purpose of better protecting your privacy in Chrome.
With the press of a button, you get seamless protection from most 3rd-party trackers while you search and browse, access to tracking protections for emails you receive, and many more protections which aren't offered in most popular browsers by default. Together these privacy essentials make more privacy your default.
FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS
• Search with DuckDuckGo by Default — install, and we'll set your default search engine and homepage to DuckDuckGo Search so you can start your Internet searches without being tracked.
• Escape Website Trackers Before They Load — automatically stop most hidden trackers (3rd-party scripts) from loading, which prevents companies from collecting and using (e.g. sale, ads, etc.) any data from these trackers. Our cutting-edge tracker blocking technology goes well above and beyond what you get in most popular browsers by default.
• Automatically Enforce Encryption — force many sites you visit to automatically use an encrypted (HTTPS) connection, which helps shield your data from Wi-Fi snoopers and network onlookers like your Internet provider. Most popular browsers only direct users to encrypted versions of pages in specific circumstances, like when you navigate directly to a page in the address bar. We check our list of upgradable sites for all links you click.
• Enable Built-in Email Protection — Over 85% of emails sent to Duck Addresses contained trackers that can detect when you’ve opened a message, where you were when you opened it, and what device you were using. Email Protection makes it easy to block most email trackers and hide your existing address when signing up for things online, all without switching email providers.
• Escape Fingerprinting — helps stop companies from creating a unique identifier for you by blocking their attempts to combine specific information about your browser and device settings.
• Block Tracking Cookies — prevents most 3rd-party cookies from tracking you as you browse from site to site.
ADDITIONAL PROTECTIONS NOT AVAILABLE ON MOST BROWSERS
• Link Tracking Protection — helps stop companies from gathering your browsing history and other information via personal identifiers embedded in the links you click on.
• Chrome’s New Tracking Tech Protection — stops Google from using your browser to collect and auction off your personal data with their latest advertising trackers and targeting (FLEDGE and Topics).
User reviews
User reviews summary
Pros
- Privacy features, including anonymous email function
- Fast and efficient, helps pages load quicker
- Education and information provided by DuckDuckGo on privacy
Cons
- Forces DuckDuckGo as the default search engine without an option to change it
- Some users report search results are not as good as Google
- Some elements of the extension interfere with other sites/functions
Most mentioned
- Changes default search engine to DuckDuckGo
- Anonymous email function
- Comparison to Google search results
Safety
Risk impact
DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials is not very risky to use and it requires a lot of sensitive permissions. Avoid installing this extension unless you absolutely trust this publisher.
Risk likelihood
DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials has earned a good reputation and can be trusted.
Screenshots
Promo images
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