Although it’s well-known as a private search engine and promises privacy to its Android and iOS users, DuckDuckGo allows certain third-party tracking scripts from Microsoft services, such as LinkedIn and Bing, to flow.
The main feature of DuckDuckGo’s browser is that it blocks tracking scripts from collecting your behavioral data. However, the browser made an exception for Microsoft-owned tracking scripts, allowing them to load even when they are known to put the user’s privacy at risk.
The news came to light when security researcher, Zach Edwards, discovered an exception for Microsoft trackers.
Gabriel Weinberg, the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, responded with his own series of tweets explaining that the browser blocks most third-party trackers, except for the Microsoft ones, because their search syndication agreement prevents them from stopping Microsoft-owned scripts from loading.
DuckDuckGo generates revenue from ads, including those delivered through Microsoft Advertising platform. The company revealed it generates more than $100 million in revenue annually, as of last June.
The browser says that, “Microsoft Advertising does not associate your ad-click behavior with a user profile” when you click on an ad. In fact, Microsoft Advertising gets the user’s full IP address and user-agent string, though there is apparently no linking of that click to a user profile, as explains by DuckDuckGo on its website.