In May of this year, DuckDuckGo came under the spotlight for the agreement it had in place with Microsoft for search syndication. The browsers that were launched for iOS and Android were found to not be blocking data flows for LinkedIn and Bing.
However, in a post on its blog today, the block list will be expanded to include scripts from Microsoft in its browsing apps (for Android and iOS) and extensions (for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera).
The key reason for this, as explained on its blog post, is that it was “due to a policy requirement related to our use of Bing as a source for our private search results”.
It goes on to say that there are no similar limitations with other companies, and the scripts were never embedded in the search engine or apps and never sent any information to DuckDuckGo.
Microsoft has also committed to not profile users from DuckDuckGo on ad clicks, even though advertising on the site is done in partnership with Microsoft. At the moment there is reliance on a tracker to detect conversions for ad clicks, but work is underway to replace this with a private architecture in the future.
The site goes into further detail about improvements to privacy and transparency across DuckDuckGo, with an aim to restore trust with its core user base.