Privateness-focused client tech firm DuckDuckGo launched a brand new Privateness Professional subscription on Thursday that bundles a VPN service, private info elimination and identification theft restoration.
The plan, which prices $9.99 per thirty days or $99 per yr, is at the moment obtainable solely to folks within the U.S. That is the corporate’s first transfer towards a subscription service constructed into the DuckDuckGo browser.
DuckDuckGo has been worthwhile since 2014, however has up to now relied on advert income. The subscription service opens up a brand new avenue for the corporate to make cash.
Picture Credit: DuckDuckGo
The VPN makes use of the open supply WireGuard protocol to guard your identification when you go to totally different websites on the net. The corporate stated that each one DNS queries are additionally routed by DuckDuckGo’s personal DNS resolvers, so web service suppliers (ISPs) can’t snoop in your looking historical past.
With its private info elimination service, DuckDuckGo scans dozens of data broker sites to search out particulars like your title and deal with. If the service finds your particulars on any of those websites, it requests elimination and in addition handles e mail correspondence with them.
Picture Credit: DuckDuckGo
The corporate says that this function builds on Removaly’s tech, a startup DuckDuckGo acquired in 2022. (At the moment, Removaly’s founder, Kyle Krzeski, posted on X {that a} privateness firm acquired the startup with out naming it.)
The third function of DuckDuckGo’s privateness professional plan is identification theft restoration, the place an advisor would assist you recuperate your identity-related loss across the clock. This contains monetary losses, fixing credit score stories by even freezing the report till identification is restored, and changing and canceling objects like driver’s licenses, financial institution playing cards, and passports. The corporate stated that the restoration agent would work with you, cope with all of the formalities, and comply with up with varied firms.
Picture Credit: DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo says that to make sure person privateness, it maintains no logs of customers’ VPN exercise, shops knowledge supplied throughout private info elimination on the native system and the corporate assigns a random ID when customers join the Privateness Professional service.
Earlier this yr, DuckDuckGo added cross-device syncing for passwords and bookmarks for straightforward entry to this info.
Earlier this yr, court filings in the U.S. Department of Justice vs. Google revealed that DuckDuckGo accounted for under 2.5% of normal search queries within the U.S. in 2021 and between 0.5% to 2.5% in Europe in 2023.
