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DuckDuckGo Brings App Tracking Protection Beta to All Android Users

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    The DuckDuckGo Android app blocks mobile app and game trackers.
    DuckDuckGo
    


    DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, aims to bring more privacy protections to Android devices by opening its App Tracking Protection beta to all users on Wednesday.
    
    Android users have an average of 35 apps on their phone, and those apps send over a thousand tracking attempts to at least 70 different tracking companies, DuckDuckGo wrote in a blog post.?
    DuckDuckGo’s ATP feature for Android aims to block third-party trackers across mobile apps and games on your device. The feature will also send you daily reports showing how many tracking attempts it has blocked across your apps for the first week after enabling ATP. After the first week, you will get those reports once every other week. This feature doesn’t send data back to DuckDuckGo or other remote servers, meaning all data stays on your Android device.?
    “DuckDuckGo identifies trackers by testing popular Android apps, observing what type of information is sent to which companies that are different from the owner of each app,” a DuckDuckGo spokesperson told CNET in an email.
    DuckDuckGo’s feature is similar to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency tool, which helps protect user data from being shared with advertisers or third parties.?
    While Apple’s feature relies on developers to stop tracking once a device disables App Tracking Transparency, ATP works directly on your phone to monitor network traffic and block trackers known by DuckDuckGo.
    There are a few apps, like browsers, that are excluded from ATP. DuckDuckGo wrote on its blog the number of excluded apps was halved during the waitlist period, and it hopes to continue shortening the list.?
    Here’s how to enable the App Tracking Protection beta on your Android device.
    1. Download DuckDuckGo for Android or update to the latest version — the latest version is 5.143.0.
    2. Open the DuckDuckGo app.
    3. Tap Settings.?
    4. Tap App Tracking Protection beta in the Privacy section.
    5.?Follow the on-screen prompts, and you’re finished!
    
    Follow these steps when turning App Tracking Protection on.
    DuckDuckGo
    For more on DuckDuckGo, check out five reasons to use DuckDuckGo and what to know about DuckDuckGo’s Mac app and email protection service.