Introducing Email Protection: The easy way to block most email trackers and hide your address
Update: Our Email Protection beta is now open to all (no more waitlist!) - read more about it here
- DuckDuckGo is launching Email Protection into beta, a new feature in our apps that will protect your email privacy without switching email services. Join the private waitlist!
- Get a free, personal @duck.com email address. Emails sent to it will forward to your regular inbox, with most of the creepy email trackers removed.
- Generate unique private email addresses in the DuckDuckGo app and extension so you can’t be tracked by your email address.
- DuckDuckGo never saves your email.
Reading your email should be a private activity. You may be surprised to learn that we found over 85% of emails sent to Duck Addresses contained trackers that can detect when you’ve opened a message, where you were when you opened it, and what device you were using. If that isn’t creepy enough, this email data can be used to profile you, including to target you with ads, and influence the content you see online. Ever open an email and see a related ad about it soon thereafter? Yup, blame email trackers. This data about you is also usually sent directly to third parties, most likely without your consent.
Introducing Email Protection
We’re excited to announce the beta release of DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection. Our free email forwarding service removes email trackers we can find and protects the privacy of your personal email address without asking you to change email services or apps. Most existing email privacy solutions come with significant tradeoffs. You either have to switch email services or apps entirely, or degrade your email experience by hiding all images. We believe protecting your personal information from leaking to third parties should be simple and seamless, like the rest of DuckDuckGo’s privacy protection bundle.
Email privacy, simplified.
Choose your Duck Email Address (you@duck.com) and start giving it out. We remove most hidden trackers from incoming emails sent to this address, then forward them to your regular inbox for safer reading. This means if you use an email service like Gmail or Yahoo, it’s no problem! Emails sent to your Personal Duck Address will arrive there as usual so you can read your email like normal, in any app or on the web, worry-free.
Get automatic Email Protection in the app. The DuckDuckGo app and extension provide easy access to your Personal Duck Address when browsing the web and also give you the option to generate new Private Duck Addresses on demand.
On sites you think could spam you or share your email address, a Private Duck Address will protect you. Since it’s common for sites to upload your email address to Google and Facebook for ad targeting, or for your email to be leaked in a data breach, this extra level of identity protection is now unfortunately necessary. You can think of it as similar to not reusing the same password everywhere. We’ve also made Private Duck Addresses easy to deactivate, so there’s no stress if you start receiving too much spam.
We don't save your emails.
We believe the content of your emails is none of our business, so DuckDuckGo will never save your emails for this service. We don't need to! When we receive an email, we immediately apply our tracker protections and then forward it to you, never saving it on our systems. We don’t even save the headers (e.g., to/from). Read more in our Privacy Guarantees.
Join the private beta waitlist.
We’re releasing our Email Protection feature into beta while we’re ironing out the wrinkles. To get access to the beta, just join the private waitlist! We're letting new people in every day, but the sooner you join, the sooner you'll be protecting your email privacy.
You won’t need to share any personal information to join the waitlist. You’ll secure your place in line with a timestamp that exists solely on your device, and we’ll notify you when we’re ready for you to join. Once you have a Personal Duck Address, you can expect DuckDuckGo to support it long-term so you can confidently share it from day one.
- Download DuckDuckGo for iOS or Android
- Open Settings > Email Protection
- Click “Join the Private Waitlist."
Having control over your privacy shouldn't be complicated or require tradeoffs. Our mission is to make it simple and stress free, for email and everything else you do online. It’s privacy, simplified.
Note: This blog post has been edited since initial publication to stay up to date with our evolving product offerings
