You Should Really Try Out DuckDuckGo's Windows Beta
If you’re looking for a privacy focused browser for your Windows PC, try DuckDuckGo’s browser and see if it works for you. It’s in public beta right now, but stable enough for you to give it a spin. We’re...
JaneWalter
If you’re looking for a privacy focused browser for your Windows PC,
try DuckDuckGo’s browser and see if it works for you. It’s in public beta right now
, but stable enough for you to give it a spin.
We’re not suggesting that you abandon your favorite browser and move to DuckDuckGo browser immediately, but you should definitely give
its privacy focused features a shot
. The browser has been available (and worth recommending) on Mac for a while, and now it’s also available for Windows. Here’s what you can do with it.
Watch YouTube videos with more privacy
The DuckDuckGo browser ships with Duck Player, which lets you watch YouTube videos without ads. It also stops YouTube from using the videos you watch to recommend new content. This allows you to pick the videos you want to watch and stops YouTube’s algorithms from dictating what you should watch.
Hide your email address
The new browser has a feature called email protection. When you sign up for any website, you’ll be able to create a unique email address ending with @duck.com. These email addresses will forward all emails to your primary email account. This way, if a website starts spamming you, you can easily get rid of one of your proxy email addresses to make the spam disappear. Although this feature has been available for a while, it’s integrated into DuckDuckGo’s browser on Windows and therefore that much easier to use.
Better tracking protection
The new browser claims to protect your privacy in many more ways, beginning with a “fire button” that allows you to clear all of your recent browsing data (such as history, cookies, etc.) in one click. This will also clear all your recent logins and that’s why there’s an option to prevent the browser from deleting browsing data on the websites you choose.
DuckDuckGo also claims its browser offers far better tracking protection than Chrome does by default. DuckDuckGo browser blocks Google and Facebook trackers, among several others, and it also switches all your links to encrypted https versions wherever it can. The encryption feature is fairly standard these days, but it’s good to have.
Automatically block annoying cookie notices
There are many ways to automatically block cookie banners online, but DuckDuckGo ships with a tool that blocks these notices by default. DuckDuckGo claims that its browser can automatically select options that offer you the most privacy in these cookie banners, and hide them too.
