DuckDuckGo Email Protection

spreadprivacy.com

35 points·tate··8 comments

Doesn't gmail already solve this problem? The way gmail solves it is by downloading all images in the email, even before you open the email. That means marketers don't know if you really opened the email. Gmail also downloads the images through proxy servers, so marketers won't know your ip address.

https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.html

Unfortunately, Google itself is a tracker. This solution, even if well done, is inherently incomplete.

The DuckDuckGo service isn't claiming to be a proxy for all of your online accounts, so of course logging into your email provider to check your email means they get your IP address, user agent, etc. How else would you expect this to work?

I meant Google's solution. It is actually great, if an email provider unrelated to ad tracking did exactly the same, it would be ideal.

DDG doing the good ol' corporate 'let me, a third party, access your communications wholesale... for privacy'

How about advising people to turn off remote content in emails first?

Wait, aren't you saying (that DDG is saying) "I'll be your email service provider"?

Or a more direct way to ask, what is your criticism?

What about completely unusable tracking links (not pixels)? Like the ones sendgrid uses.

Some of them are one-click unsubscribe links so I doubt DDG is going to unroll those.

Imho this looks a bit like they want to push their browser app on mobile. Why not let people join the waitlist via desktop?

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