I’m sorry if this does not belong here; I’m not quite familiar with this place yet. Feel free to move it if necessary. Thank you.
This post is aimed to inform you.
So, I was surprised to find an Advanced Privacy notification this morning warning me that a tracker related to DuckDuckGo browser had been blocked. Unfortunately, I wiped out the notification and forgot to write down the name of the tracker. Sorry about that.
How could that be? DDG blocks all the trackers it finds in all the apps and it wouldn’t be able to block one in a website?
I found the tracker in Advanced Privacy history, it’s TagCommander (Commanders Act).
I’d like to know what knowledgeable people think of this.
Thank you.
Trackers, like viruses, are constantly changing. If DDG becomes aware of the one it missed, it will most likely be added to the list and blocked subsequently.
What does “all trackers” mean? Does everyone have the same definition? What are the objective and measurable criteria for defining a tracker? Is there an official and up-to-date list?
Sorry, but there is no magic filter that blocks all trackers.
It means that Duck duck go does not block all the trackers because maintaining a list of them is a big work and also because they might receive payement for whitelisting some trackers…
That’s a bold statement and certainly a misunderstanding of what a browser is capable of. A browser might block trackers (those it knows and if technically feasible) for visited websites only but not for/ in other apps on your device.
If yes, I agree with the other users here: A browser can only block the trackers on websites it visits, not trackers in other apps. Your finding in Advanced Privacy most probably comes from a tracker that the DDG browser did not blacklist, but /e/OS did; or both blocked it at the same time, or something similar. It may however be possible that the DDG browser will add the tracker to its blacklist in the near future.
An addendum: I use Firefox with uBlock Origin, which is IMHO one of the best tracking and ad blockers on the market. Still, Advanced Privacy shows a lot of trackers for Firefox. They obviously come from the visited websites, and I assume that uBlock Origin and Advanced Privacy block them at the same time - maybe there is some timing issue, I do not know.
i installed DDG Browser directly from the App lounge, not from Fdroid and it does block trackers in other apps. Details here: What is DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection?
I use this feature in addition to Advanced Privacy; it’s a bit like wearing pants with both belt and suspenders but apparently it proved useful.
I sent DDG a message about that tracker that was detected in their app; I’m waiting for their answer.
it´s not the “browser itself” you are talking of but an additional feature that it provides, called App Tracking Protection. It utilizes the vpn-interface of your device to control outgoing traffic and thus blocks outgoing communication of trackers within apps according to (hopefully well maintained) blocklists, just like other apps like eg rethinkDNS, Blokada, personalDNSfilter etcpp. do.
In that case - as mentioned before by others - DDG probably does not have that tracker on its blacklists - not yet or for whatever reason (for instance DDG states they do not block what they call 1st party trackers).
Please let us know DDGs answer if you do not mind sharing.
Do not forget that DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection or Advanced privacy or any similar solution is only able to block trackers traffic that is emitted from your device directly (client side), even if they have a perfectly up-to-date and comprehensive black list (which will never be the case).
Most big apps like whatsapp and a growing number of third-party apps are sending your private data indirectly, first to their own servers (those network calls cannot be blocked because their are indistinguable from the necessary traffic of the app and the traffic is encrypted most of the time anyway) and then to the data broker server or tracker platform
Hopefully you are right. Anyway this shouldn’t happen.
I got an answer from DDG saying that they had never seen such a thing before and are forwarding the info to the developers. In the meantime, it’s now 57 trackers in DDG that have been blocked by Advanced Privacy.
[Somehow off topic: Advanced Privacy also blocked trackers in App Lounge, both directed to Google.]
yet still … in any setup like this, the browser has to take the blame for all the trackers of any given website.
Now why blame one of two instances that have the very same task for being the first to achieve it?
You refer to the browser itself or to the special feature? (Probably impossible to discern for AP)
Remember AP works on the system level and DDGs tracker blocking feature can only guard @ the vpn-interface of the device (the door out if you will), guess who strikes first…
(In case DDG logs its blocking activities you could first clear AP user data (for being able to easily identify trackers), check DDG blocker logs after connecting to a specific website, then switch off AP, clear cache of browser, refresh the website and check the logs again…)
I’d like to do that but I cannot find any way to clear DDG data, or even the entire data, in Advanced Privacy. Any idea how to do that?
Anyway, to update the status of this problem, it appeared that Proton VPN had disabled DDG app tracking system. I activated app tracking back but Advanced Privacy keep finding leaks from DDG app to Google and TagCommander (Commanders Act).
I gave up warning the DDG team about that. I gave up on entire privacy being allowed nowadays anyway.
I guess this can be locked unless people still want to contribute.
just adding to this: menu allows clearing app storage as well - one might refer to this as “user data” as it will reset app settings, log you off (if logged in) and the like, in case of Advanced Privacy it will e.g. reset all the counters and statistics of AP´s Tracker-Blocker-function.
For Advanced Privacy you need to go:
device settings → apps → all apps → system apps (in 3dot-menu right upper corner) → Advanced Privacy
That is expected behaviour as there is only one single interface in the device for “VPN” that also DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection uses (as I explained in an earlier post)
So if DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection is active and you activate say Proton VPN, the latter will take over the interface and thus disable DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection - should work vice versa…
Also note that there is an “always on” function for each “VPN” that any capable App provides for the VPN-interface of the device (again: only one can be active at a time) - which might add complexity to the behaviour…
… It is simple once you understand there is only one VPN-interface in the device and only one app can use it at a time - be it “always on” or not…
Feel free to move it if necessary. Thank you. 
