Anyone can sign up for DuckDuckGo’s privacy-protecting @duck.com email address

Image: DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo has finally made its email protection service available to everyone. Email Protection assigns you a freeduck.com email address and intercepts email trackers before they hit your inbox.

If you want to know more about DuckDuckGo's Email Protection service, you can use a private "duck" address. When you open an email, DuckDuckGo strips it of the trackers that snoop on your location and the device you use. How many trackers it removed and which companies they were attached to are included in the breakdown.

You can assign a personal address to your duck address. Each time you fill out an email field, DuckDuckGo creates a random address, which could be avtzqdr@duck.com. If you use a new private address every time you fill out an online form, it will be harder for companies to track you. If you are receiving a lot of email, you can change the private address.

Image: DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is adding a few new features now that it's open to the public. Link tracking protection will remove any trackers embedded in the links added to emails. It is also rolling out a new feature that converts any links using a secure method. Your internet service provider or hacker can't see how you interact with a website if you use a URL that's secure.

You can reply from your private or personal duck address with DuckDuckGo. This can help hide your email address when you reply to someone who you don't want to know who you are. DuckDuckGo says it can't guarantee that the email won't include your forwarding address or any other personal identifying information.

You can change your forwarding address with the new self-service dashboard from DuckDuckGo. If you want to try it out for yourself, you can use the DuckDuckGo extension for Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, or you can use the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser for all of the major mobile platforms.

According to Omid Majdi, the product lead at DuckDuckGo, the biggest threats to email privacy are trackers and profiling. The DuckDuckGo Email Protection addresses both of these issues and does so in a simple way, with more privacy, and we are very excited to make it open to everyone.