Guide: How to Maximize Privacy and Security on DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a great search engine when you get food up with the spying eyes of Google and other search engines. The service promises never to collect information about you, and certainly never to sell your searches to advertisers. Check out these four tips to get the most out of DuckDuckGo’s privacy and security features Shutterstock While that’s tempting in itself, there are features within DuckDuckGo you can take advantage to improve your privacy and security even more. The search engine is highly customizable, so control is in good hands – yours. Get the best out of DuckDuckGo with this handy one tips to increase your privacy online and strengthen your security.
1. Enable WOT icons
Enabling WOT icons in your search results can help you avoid potentially dangerous websites. WOT stands for Web of Trust, a service that analyzes the possible security risks of any website. A green circle means it is clear (safe), yellow means be careful before visiting the website and red means avoid at all costs.
Since DuckDuckGo has this functionality built in, you can enable it through the advanced settings. Click the menu icon at the top right of the DuckDuckGo homepage and choose Advanced Settings. Click on the Appearance tab and scroll all the way down to find the WOT icons option. Click Off to then enable it and make sure to click Save and Exit to apply the changes.
Tip All tips In this article, you have to click on the menu icon first and choose Advanced Settings, so keep that in mind for later.
2. Quit Google Maps
In particular, if you’re anti-Google and don’t want any aspect of your online life tracked, then you probably don’t want DuckDuckGo to use Google Maps to get you directions. However, this may be the case depending on your current settings.
To make DuckDuckGo use a different provider for directions, go to your DuckDuckGo Advanced Settings to choose something else. Scroll the General tab to find directions.
Then choose your preference: Bing Maps, Google Maps, HERE Maps or OpenStreetMap. Apple Maps is also available if you are using a Mac.
3. Prevent websites from knowing how you got there
DuckDuckGo has a handy little one feature called Redirect. When redirection is turned on, websites cannot keep track of the search term you used to get to the page. This is because when you click on a link, DuckDuckGo temporarily redirects to a subdomain before taking you to the website. (You don’t even notice.)
Note: While this prevents the websites from collecting information about your search query, it can still only collect your information from the browser itself. Check out our guides to enable Do Not Track in Google Chrome and Internet Explorer to also stop this snooping activity. Go to the advanced settings on DuckDuckGo, click on the Privacy tab, then click to make sure Redirect is turned on to enable it featureClick Save and Exit to apply.
4. Anonymous cloud storage
Since DuckDuckGo does not collect information about you, it means that it cannot always recognize that it is you who perform your search. However, if you’re someone who customizes settings (like the one above) or theme, you may want to keep these settings in sync across multiple devices. That way, you don’t have to keep going back and making the changes.
DuckDuckGo’s Cloud Save feature is completely anonymous, so it still doesn’t collect information about you. When you have all your settings in a row up you want to sync, click Save Settings under Cloud Save in Advanced Settings. This will ask you to enter a passphrase that you will need to remember in the future to recover your data later. Click on Save and you are done.
Now if you want to restore your DuckDuckGo preferences, you can do it in the same place: click Load Settings under Advanced Settings and enter that passphrase. READ ALSO: 5 Reasons To Search The Web With DuckDuckGo
How to Maximize Privacy and Security on DuckDuckGo: benefits
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