DuckDuckGo is introducing a new Email Protection service designed to stop ad companies tracking your emails and spying on your inbox.

Aside from the prospect of better privacy and less online tracking, DuckDuckGo's Email Protection comes with another neat perk: a personal "@duck.com" email address.

DuckDuckGo Wants to Protect Your Inbox From Trackers

While the duck.com email address is cool, it is also integral to DuckDuckGo's Email Protection service.

Instead of providing your regular email address to online services, you provide a unique private email address generated using the DuckDuckGo Email Protection extension. The unique email addresses will forward emails to your duck.com account, which scans and removes intrusive trackers and other analytics tools.

Once your incoming email is clean, and your privacy is restored, DuckDuckGo forwards the email to your actual email address. The idea is that you can safely give your duck.com email address to friends and family, while the uniquely generated Email Protection addresses will help you weed out any services that send you spam, resell your account information, and so on.

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.

In the Email Protection Privacy Guarantees, DuckDuckGo also confirms that it never saves any emails, which would go against the ideals of the service, to begin with. When the Email Protection service receives an email, it immediately removes the trackers and forwards the clean email to your email address proper.

Related: Can Google Chrome Still Track You When You're Using DuckDuckGo?

If you like the sound of some additional email privacy in your inbox, you can join the DuckDuckGo Email Protection beta waitlist from within the DuckDuckGo app.

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

Once you download the app and join the waitlist, a unique timestamp is stored in the app. You don't need to sign up with an email address, and the DuckDuckGo app will notify you when you can begin using the Email Protection service.

Block Email Trackers with DuckDuckGo Email Protection

The prospect of an email protection service that doesn't require you to forgo your existing email account is a great option. Asking people to leave behind established email addresses is never an easy ask. But asking people to sign-up for an Email Protection service operated by the internet's most privacy-focused company is an easier step to take.

With email trackers present in more than 70 percent of all mailing lists, it is no wonder that DuckDuckGo is taking steps to provide simple email protection, boosting user privacy and making it available to anyone.