Duckduckgo tracking protection?
A general question on the efficacy of Duck Duck Go in blocking trackers.
A friend of mine with decent credentials in security is constantly shitting on any use of DDG. I use it on an e/OS which was preinstalled into settings to block both browsing and tracking through my apps, the worse being banking apps even when not in use. He has even gone so far as to state that they are probably faking the numbers of blocks to get people to keep using the products. Another line is that it is Russian built/propagated garbage product.
Does anyone else hold this belief? I have not seen much of this discussed here in this forum and also see it recommended often enough. I ask you fine folks because it just feels so defeating.
Sorry for, source: this god damn bloke told me.
I dug into it, and it appears to be a DDG flavor of a DNS blocker (e.g., pihole, Technitium, etc.). It uses a blocklist to block specific tracking data sent from your phoneby comparing those URLs against the blocklist, then preventing the connection if it matches.
You can get the same effect, plus ad blocking, by changing your phone’s DNS to a public DNS like AdGuard, NextDNS, or something similar. You can use a VPN with the same capabilities, or if you want self hosted, run something like pihole or Technitium.
DDG’s service doesn’t seem to be bad, but it is limited in scope.
Disclaimer, I am an amateur in these matters not any kind of expert. I run my own instance of Technitium at home for network wide blocking, but that’s about it.