DuckDuckGo Removes Microsoft Tracking Scripts Exclusion After Securing Policy Change

A few months after a tracking controversy hit privacy-centric search veteran DuckDuckGo, the company announced it was able to amend terms with Microsoft, its search syndication partner, which previously meant its mobile browsers and browser extensions have been prevented from blocking ad requests made by Microsoft scripts on third-party sites.

In a blog post pledging "more privacy and transparency for DuckDuckGo web tracking protections", Founder and CEO Gabe Weinberg writes: "Over the next week, we will be expanding the third-party tracking scripts that we prevent from loading on websites to include scripts from Microsoft in our browser apps (iOS and Android) and browser extensions (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and Opera), with apps beta to follow in the coming month."

"This expands our third-party tracker loading protection, which prevents identified tracking scripts from Facebook, Google and other companies from loading on third-party websites, to now include third-party Microsoft tracking scripts. This web tracking protection is not offered by default by most other popular browsers and is in addition to many other DuckDuckGo protections,” he added.

DDG claims that this third-party tracker loading protection is not offered by default by most other popular browsers.

“The default tracking protection of most browsers focuses on cookies and fingerprinting which only limits third-party tracking scripts after they load into your browser. Unfortunately, this level of protection leaves information such as your IP address and other identifiers sent with upload requests vulnerable to profiling. Our third-party tracker loading protection helps address this vulnerability, preventing most third-party trackers from loading in the first place, providing significantly better protection,” Weinberg writes in the blog post.

"Previously, we were limited in how we could apply our third-party tracker loading protection on Microsoft tracking scripts due to a policy requirement related to our use of Bing as the source for our search results. We're glad that's no longer the case. We haven't had, and don't have, a similar limitation with any other company."

"Microsoft scripts have never been integrated into our search engine or our applications, which do not follow you", he adds. “Websites insert these scripts for their own purposes, and so they never send any information to DuckDuckGo. Since we already limit Microsoft tracking through our other web tracking protections, such as third-party cookie blocking from Microsoft in our browsers, this update means we now do a lot more to block trackers than most other browsers.

Asked whether DDG will release its new contract with Microsoft, or if it is still bound by an NDA, Weinberg replied, "Nothing else has changed and we have no further information to share about it."

The search provider's exclusion from DDG was detected in May via an independent audit conducted by privacy researcher, Zach Edwards.

At the time, DDG confessed to an anomaly, but said he basically had no choice but to accept Microsoft's terms, although he also said he was unhappy of the restriction and hoped to be able to remove it in the future.

Asked whether the publicity generated by the controversy helped persuade the tech giant to loosen the restriction on its ability to block Microsoft ad scripts on non-Microsoft sites, DDG referred us to Microsoft.

When we asked the same question of the tech giant, a spokesperson told us:

Microsoft has policies in place to ensure that we balance the needs of our publishers with the needs of our advertisers to accurately track conversions on our network. We have partnered with DuckDuckGo to understand the implications of this policy and are pleased to have arrived at a solution that addresses these concerns.

In a transparency-focused step announced today, DDG announced that it is releasing its Tracker Protection List - available here on Github - although the company told us the information was previously available, but suggested it's easier to find now.

He also sent...