It is simply a myth that Incognito mode protects your online privacy in any significant way it is really more of an offline protector. The truth is that Chrome’s Incognito mode only prevents your browser history from being recorded on your local device and does not offer any additional protection such as preventing the websites you visit from collecting your information (e.g., your searches on a search engine). We believe it is important to expand a bit on these myths so that you don’t have a false sense of security if you choose to utilize those methods.Ī lot of people are shocked to learn that websites can still track you even in Chrome’s “Incognito” mode. Sadly, neither of these mechanisms protect you from Google search tracking or its trackers on other websites. Unfortunately, people think that they can make searching Google and browsing the rest of the web anonymous by using Chrome’s so-called “Incognito” mode (also known as Private Browsing mode) or its “Do Not Track” browser setting.

On Google, your searches are tracked, mined, and packaged up into a data profile for advertisers to follow you around the Internet through those intrusive, annoying, and ever-present banner ads, via Google’s massive ad networks, embedded across millions of sites and apps. While DuckDuckGo is completely anonymous, Google is of course not. That’s also why we can’t tell you for sure how many people use DuckDuckGo, because if we counted, our users wouldn’t necessarily be anonymous. In fact, we don’t even store anything that could even tie anonymous searches together into an anonymous search history, which has been shown in some cases to be able to be de-anonymized (like if you searched for personal information about yourself). We simply don’t store anything that can tie searches to you personally.

Each time you search on DuckDuckGo, you have a blank search history, as if you’ve never been there before. We operate a search engine alternative to Google at, and offer additional apps and extensions to protect you from Google, Facebook and other trackers, no matter where you go on the Internet.ĭuckDuckGo search is completely anonymous, in line with our strict privacy policy.

If you’re unfamiliar with DuckDuckGo, we are an Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs.

How Anonymous Is DuckDuckGo? Filed under DuckDuckGo Q&A