When Apple introduced App Transparency Tool, it quickly sent tremors to the whole online advertising industry.
Since the feature was introduced alongside iOS 14.5, iPhone and iPad owners could prevent apps from tracking their behaviors and use that data for personalized advertising. As a result, almost $10 billion has been wiped from the revenues of Meta's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and others.
DuckDuckGo started out as a privacy search engine, before kickstarting the attempt by introducing what it calls the 'App Tracking Protection' feature.
The company is positioning the feature as something like Apple's App Tracking Transparency for iOS devices, but "even more powerful."
Best of all, DuckDuckGo said that the process happens "without sending app data to DuckDuckGo or other remote servers."
But in order to do what it's supposed to do, it first needs to report itself as a VPN to Android.
Doing so allows it to run uninterrupted in the background and intercept all internet traffic to and from users' device.
When running, the service can automatically block trackers listed on DuckDuckGo's public blocklist.
While the feature works like a VPN, in which it works around transferring user data, DuckDuckGo said that it's not a real VPN.
This is because everything happens on users' device.
This is a good thing, because as long as the blocking happens on users' device, there is no chance for anyone to eavesdrop or spy on users' internet activities.
The downside is that, users cannot use any other VPN service while the DuckDuckGo’s App Tracking Protection is turned on.
On Android, only one VPN can be enabled at a time.
This is why DuckDuckGo recommends VPN users just enable the feature only when they’re not using their VPN.
It’s worth noting that DuckDuckGo's App Tracking Protection is disabled by default for some apps, including web browsers.
DuckDuckGo has to do this because its aggressive tracker blockers can disrupt websites users visit. But still, users have the option to manually enable App Tracking Protection for whichever app users have on their phone.
Users can do this by going to App Tracking Protection settings, to then toggle the apps they want App Tracking Protection to be on.
Once enabled, not only that App Tracking Protection runs in the background, because the service also provides real-time updates, letting users know just how many trackers have been detected and blocked.
In an example provided by DuckDuckGo on its blog post, “a phone with 35 apps can experience between 1,000-2,000 tracking attempts every day and contact 70+ different tracking companies."