Olivia Cavallaro Tech 08.28.2022 23:Aug PM EDT

DuckDuckGo's Email Protection Service Now Available for Everyone to Use

The free tracking interceptor service is now available for the public so they can get their own @duck.com email address.

Up to 320 billion spam emails are sent every day, and up to 94% of malware is delivered through spam emails. In addition, more than half of all global email traffic is spam, which is why email users are often left to rely on their email provider's spam protection technologies or fend for themselves. But now, tech developers like DuckDuckGo are addressing the need for better spam protection.

Forbes reported that aside from these statistics, Google's Gmail blicks over 100 million phishing emails daily as of 2020. To help combat these and other spam-related problems, DuckDuckGo is now enabling anyone who's interested in their tracking interceptor service to get their hands on it for free. After rolling out its Email Protection service through a private beta in 2021, the company is now letting the general public get a free "@duck.com" email address and use the service to intercept email trackers before they arrive in a user's inbox.

According to Bleeping Computer, DuckDuckGo's email Email Protection service first launched as a closed beta in July 2021. The beta is still ongoing, but the Paoli, Pennsylvania-based company decided to make it available to the public last week as it introduced several new features such as a direct reply function and smart encryption for embedded links.

What to Expect from DuckDuckGo's Email Protection Service

DuckDuckGo's Email Protection service is a unique email forwarding solution that removes advertising and profiling trackers in an email before they are received in a user's typical email inbox. When the email is received in their "@duck.com" account, users are provided with a short report on the number of trackers removed and which companies were behind the trackers, among other details.

As per DuckDuckGo, the year-long beta program has shown that more than 85% of all emails on the tester's communications contain trackers.

DuckDuckGo Releases New Features

Upon opening the beta to all users across the Internet, DuckDuckGo has also added new features to its Email Protection service, such as link tracking protection, which removes trackers in the body of an email, including those embedded in images, The Verge reported.

DuckDuckGo is also releasing a smarter encryption feature that uses an unencrypted "https://" connection to a secure "https://" link. URLs that use HTTPS prevents an internet service provider (ISP) or any bad actors from seeing how users interact with a website. This new DuckDuckGo feature now supports 28 million sites and is adding more every day.

DuckDuckGo users can now also reply using their Duck address, which helps conceal their actual email address when replying to a person or company that a user does want to disclose his or her email address or identity. However, because the email is sent using the user's email client, DuckDuckGo cannot guarantee that the email will not include the forwarding address or other personal identifiers.

DuckDuckGo's Email Protection service comes at a time when 96% of phishing attacks are conducted via email, Tessian reported. About 38% of phishing emails contain links to a malicious website, while 36% of them come with a malicious attachment, which is most often a PDF file.