Introducing Email Protection: The easy way to block most email trackers and hide your address (2024)

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Update: Our Email Protection beta is now open to all (no more waitlist!) - read more about it here

  • DuckDuckGo is launching Email Protection into beta, a new feature in our apps that will protect your email privacy without switching email services. Join the private waitlist!
  • Get a free, personal @duck.com email address. Emails sent to it will forward to your regular inbox, with most of the creepy email trackers removed.
  • Generate unique private email addresses in the DuckDuckGo app and extension so you can’t be tracked by your email address.
  • DuckDuckGo never saves your email.

Reading your email should be a private activity. You may be surprised to learn that we found over 85% of emails sent to Duck Addresses contained trackers that can detect when you’ve opened a message, where you were when you opened it, and what device you were using. If that isn’t creepy enough, this email data can be used to profile you, including to target you with ads, and influence the content you see online. Ever open an email and see a related ad about it soon thereafter? Yup, blame email trackers. This data about you is also usually sent directly to third parties, most likely without your consent.

Introducing Email Protection: The easy way to block most email trackers and hide your address (1)

Introducing Email Protection

We’re excited to announce the beta release of DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection. Our free email forwarding service removes email trackers we can find and protects the privacy of your personal email address without asking you to change email services or apps. Most existing email privacy solutions come with significant tradeoffs. You either have to switch email services or apps entirely, or degrade your email experience by hiding all images. We believe protecting your personal information from leaking to third parties should be simple and seamless, like the rest of DuckDuckGo’s privacy protection bundle.

Email privacy, simplified.

Choose your Duck Email Address (you@duck.com) and start giving it out. We remove most hidden trackers from incoming emails sent to this address, then forward them to your regular inbox for safer reading. This means if you use an email service like Gmail or Yahoo, it’s no problem! Emails sent to your Personal Duck Address will arrive there as usual so you can read your email like normal, in any app or on the web, worry-free.

Introducing Email Protection: The easy way to block most email trackers and hide your address (2)

Get automatic Email Protection in the app. The DuckDuckGo app and extension provide easy access to your Personal Duck Address when browsing the web and also give you the option to generate new Private Duck Addresses on demand.

On sites you think could spam you or share your email address, a Private Duck Address will protect you. Since it’s common for sites to upload your email address to Google and Facebook for ad targeting, or for your email to be leaked in a data breach, this extra level of identity protection is now unfortunately necessary. You can think of it as similar to not reusing the same password everywhere. We’ve also made Private Duck Addresses easy to deactivate, so there’s no stress if you start receiving too much spam.

Introducing Email Protection: The easy way to block most email trackers and hide your address (3)

We don't save your emails.

We believe the content of your emails is none of our business, so DuckDuckGo will never save your emails for this service. We don't need to! When we receive an email, we immediately apply our tracker protections and then forward it to you, never saving it on our systems. We don’t even save the headers (e.g., to/from). Read more in our Privacy Guarantees.

Join the private beta waitlist.

We’re releasing our Email Protection feature into beta while we’re ironing out the wrinkles. To get access to the beta, just join the private waitlist! We're letting new people in every day, but the sooner you join, the sooner you'll be protecting your email privacy.

You won’t need to share any personal information to join the waitlist. You’ll secure your place in line with a timestamp that exists solely on your device, and we’ll notify you when we’re ready for you to join. Once you have a Personal Duck Address, you can expect DuckDuckGo to support it long-term so you can confidently share it from day one.

  1. Download DuckDuckGo for iOS or Android
  2. Open Settings > Email Protection
  3. Click “Join the Private Waitlist."

Having control over your privacy shouldn't be complicated or require tradeoffs. Our mission is to make it simple and stress free, for email and everything else you do online. It’s privacy, simplified.

Note: This blog post has been edited since initial publication to stay up to date with our evolving product offerings

Introducing Email Protection: The easy way to block most email trackers and hide your address (2024)

FAQs

How to block email trackers? ›

How to block email trackers
  1. Get enhanced tracking protection. The easiest way to stop email tracking is to use Proton Mail with enhanced tracking protection. ...
  2. Hide your email with aliases. Another way to limit email tracking is to hide your email address. ...
  3. Turn off autoloading images. ...
  4. Get a browser extension. ...
  5. Use a VPN.
Mar 24, 2023

What is the best email tracking blocker? ›

PixelBlock is an Gmail extension that blocks email tracking attempts used to detect when you open and read emails.

How do I keep email addresses hidden? ›

To send an email to undisclosed recipients, you need to use the BCC section when adding recipients. BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy. Overall, sending emails to undisclosed recipients protects the privacy of yourself and the recipients, it also appears cleaner, and professional.

How can we protect your email and keep it private? ›

Let's go over a few:
  1. Use a strong original password.
  2. Enable two-factor authentication.
  3. Regularly run software updates.
  4. Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) when checking your email.
  5. Block spam and unauthorized senders.
  6. Keep an eye out for phishing attacks.
  7. Protect your real email address with aliases.
May 20, 2024

How do I stop trackers from tracking me? ›

How To Stop Being Tracked Online
  1. Use ad blockers and anti-track tools.
  2. Try a data privacy-focused browser.
  3. Turn on Google's “Do Not Track” feature.
  4. Hide your browsing history with a VPN.
  5. Regularly clear your cache and cookies.
  6. Adjust your device-level privacy settings.
  7. Browse in incognito mode.
Feb 6, 2024

How can you tell if someone is using an email tracker? ›

Other server-side trackers send their email or website URL together with the email. You can look out for them. To know if this is the method the sender is using, go to your email service and find the Show Original Message icon, which shows server-side data.

Can someone monitor my email without me knowing? ›

Email trackers can even track your IP address and approximate location. According to one study, over 70% of emails from mailing lists contain trackers . But there are ways to block trackers and keep your email activity private.

How do I remove an email tracker? ›

1) On your computer, open Chrome. 2) In Chrome, click More (the 3 vertical dots in the top right-hand corner of the screen). 3) Go to More tools > Extensions. 4) Search for Mailtrack using the search option at the top of the screen then remove it by clicking on the remove option.

Is there an email blocker? ›

Block an email address

When you block a sender, messages they send you go to Spam. On your computer, go to Gmail. Open the message. Click Block [sender].

How can I make my email address private? ›

Private Email: 5 Tips for Keeping Your Email Secure
  1. Use two-factor authentication.
  2. Limit forwarding.
  3. Set expiration dates on your messages.
  4. Understand your service provider's TOS.
  5. Encrypt your email.

Can a hidden email be traced? ›

Yes. You can retrieve the IP address in your email header to trace an email to a location. To get the IP address, paste the information to any email header analyzer of your choice. The sender's IP address can give you rough indications about the origin of an email.

What is a hidden email address? ›

Hide My Email is a service that lets you keep your personal email address private, whether you're creating a new account with an app, signing up for a newsletter online, making a purchase with Apple Pay or sending an email to someone you don't know well.

What is the most hacked email provider? ›

What is the most hacked email provider? Historically, large providers like Yahoo have experienced significant breaches, making them among the most hacked email services.

How do I stop someone from accessing my Google account? ›

  1. Go to your Google Account.
  2. On the left navigation panel, select Security.
  3. On the "Your devices" panel, select Manage devices.
  4. Check for any devices you don't recognize. If you find a device that you don't recognize: Select Don't recognize a device? Then, follow the steps on the screen to help secure your account.

How do I obscure an email address? ›

By far, the easiest way to hide your email address from crawlers is by removing or replacing some characters. The most common method is to replace '@' character with [at]. It's fairly obvious to just about anyone what the correct address is, and bots looking strictly for email addresses will get confused.

How do I disable the Mail tracker? ›

If you want to remove Mailtrack from your Android or iOS device, you'll need to go to the Gmail app and log into your account. After logging in, find the Gmail settings menu. There, you'll see an add-ons tab where the Mailtrack logo will be. Then, tap on “Manage” and you'll be able to remove Mailtrack.

How do I block all detected trackers? ›

Top 12 Ways To Stop Being Tracked Online
  1. Use an anti-tracking browser.
  2. Use Tor Browser.
  3. Use an anti-tracking extension in your preferred browser.
  4. Use a private search engine.
  5. Clear private data when closing your browser.
  6. Use a VPN.
  7. Set your devices to “do not track”
  8. Stay private when it comes to public WiFis.

How do you send an email that Cannot be tracked? ›

How to send an anonymous email
  1. Create a new anonymous email account.
  2. Use a disposable phone number.
  3. Use a burner email.
  4. Hide your IP address using a VPN or the Tor browser.
Feb 14, 2024

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