Default Private Search in Private Browsing Mode

DuckDuckGo and Vivaldi Partner on Private Browsing Mode.

As regular readers of this blog will know, but sadly most people still do not, Private Browsing modes generally don’t prevent online tracking of your searches, and this includes everything you type into Google. Private browsing modes are designed to erase history information on your computer, but don’t do much to prevent the sites you visit from tracking and monitoring your behavior to build up personal profiles.

In addition, searches in Private Browsing mode are usually performed using the default search engine. This means a non-private search engine will continue to use tracking methods such as collecting your IP address or browser fingerprinting. So really that Private Browsing mode isn’t so private after all.

Recently we gave our browser extensions a boost with more features that are meant to protect you, bundling essential privacy features such as tracker blocking and an encryption protection feature that automatically sends you to an encrypted version of a website (if there is one), instead of accepting a default non-encrypted version.

We continue to focus on expanding our privacy ecosystem by partnering with premium privacy companies to offer private search. Our most recent exciting news is that we have partnered with Vivaldi Browser to help them become the first browser to enable private search by DuckDuckGo as the default in their Private Window mode.

Why is this important?

The first thing many people do when opening a Private Window is search the web. Unfortunately they immediately expose themselves to tracking if they are not using DuckDuckGo. Now in Vivaldi, the moment you start using private browsing mode, your search is private as you'd expect — no need to change anything. Your searches and personal information will not be collected or shared while using Private Windows, in addition to the privacy protection features that Vivaldi gives you by default.

With users often keeping default settings in software, this addition to the latest version of Vivaldi is an important step towards both convenience and privacy.

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