DuckDuckGo browser has announced the arrival of a feature to prevent third-party applications from tracking user activity on the internet. The program, known for focusing on user privacy, brought this new feature to Android to bring a similar function to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT). Even the name is inspired by the functionality, introduced by Apple in iOS 14.5: App Tracking Protection (ATP).
In practice, what ATP does is prevent trackers built into various Android apps from monitoring your actions on the web. Today, many paid or free software use this feature to collect data about users and pass it on to digital marketing services.
You’ve probably already researched something on the Market Livre app, for example, and then came across several advertisements for products viewed on websites and social networks accessed. That’s because most apps have trackers to monitor where you clicked, your location and device, whether you placed a product in your cart, which pages were opened and closed quickly, among other information.
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How does the DuckDuckGo feature work?
Whenever an app tries to send its collected data, the browser system will block the activity and display the types of trackers blocked in real-time, in addition to data from all attempts made in the last seven days. This monitoring allows the user to see which apps make use of this “invasion” to help in making a decision whether or not to continue using it.
For now, there are still limitations to the feature: it won’t block apps that rely on tracking to function properly, such as some games, streaming services, and the like. On the one hand, this is great news because you won’t have any problems running your favorite applications, but on the other hand, it can make those who care more about your privacy more suspicious.
The service will work with a listing of trackers from the company’s database, so some recent online activity may not be included. Developers plan to identify more and more trackers and add them periodically to keep this list up to date.
There is still no forecast when the novelty will be made available definitively to everyone. The fact is, this is a very welcome addition to at least partially address the lack of an equal feature in Android, even though the new version brings with it several improvements to user privacy controls.
