Late last year, DuckDuckGo joined a privacy-focused initiative called Global Privacy Control (GPC) along with other organizations and individuals in an effort to develop an open standard to help users assert their rights against online tracking. Now, it's bringing that online privacy protection to a new level.
DuckDuckGo announced today that it is enabling the GPC setting by default in its mobile apps for Android and iOS as well as browser extensions for Google Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. When switched on, GPC will signal a website you visit that you've opted out from being tracked.
The service noted it already provides anti-tracking features for your web sessions. GPC serves as additional legal protection for your privacy rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), especially in cases where websites in certain locations may sell or share your data to advertisers or data brokers.
Publishers that participated in the GPC initiative include The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Automattic. DuckDuckGo also revealed that these publishers are now set to enforce this standard when people visit their websites.
If you want to give it a try, you can update your DuckDuckGo app to version 7.61.11 or newer on iOS and version 5.73.0 or newer on Android. On desktop, you can just install the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension for Chrome, Firefox, Brave or Edge, or update to version 2021.1.8 or later.
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