Privacy-focused Internet search engine DuckDuckGo promises users a dream experience of private searches, no ad-trackers, and smart encryption — all for free. With such a promise, the 13-year-old company appears to be in a prime position to satisfy Internet users’ growing desire for privacy in an age of data leaks, breaches and scams.
According to a report by SpreadPrivacy.com last June, DuckDuckGo’s popularity has recently increased with over 50 million app downloads and a 55% traffic increase over the past year. The search engine is yet another tool you can add to your digital privacy arsenal, such as Apple’s opt-out of tracking signal, which 84% of Apple users have chosen since the iOS 14.5 release.
In addition to its private search engine, DuckDuckGo offers a privacy browser app as well as a Chrome extension for iOS and Android. If you don’t want to download the app or extension, you can also go to duckduckgo.com and run your search there. Here’s how to use DuckDuckGo on your browser or mobile.
From there, DuckDuckGo will ask you to do a quick search as in a tutorial. I searched a clothing store I frequent and DuckDuckGo immediately informed me that it blocked two ad trackers. You can also see how DuckDuckGo graded the website you visited, how many trackers were blocked, whether the connection is encrypted and the site’s privacy practices.
Tap the flame icon next to the search bar to clear any vulnerable personal data from your tab. Tap Clear all tabs and data to “burn” your personal data.
From there, DuckDuckGo will redirect you to your Settings app for any additional changes and to see what the program will have access to. You can also choose your default browser app here, from Safari to DuckDuckGo.
After configuring your settings the way you want, you can open the app and start running searches. When I visited CNN.com, DuckDuckGo reported that it had blocked about 30 trackers. In addition, the app provided a privacy grade for the site, as well as an option to erase personal data from the browser with a fire icon.
DuckDuckGo and Siri
Under DuckDuckGo’s tab in Settings, you can see what the program can do with Siri and your search requests. You can choose whether or not Siri learns from your DuckDuckGo searches to make suggestions for you, allow the DuckDuckGo app and its content to appear in search, as well as allow suggestions and content from DuckDuckGo and Shortcuts to appear in the app . Search and Widget. If you don’t have Siri enabled, this is not something you need to worry about.
Wordle has exploded in popularity since its debut late last year. Wordle is simple: subtract a five-letter word from six guesses each day, with a new puzzle at midnight local time.
Recently purchased by The New York Times, Wordle has moved to the NYT website, where it is still free. Some people think it’s hard now (it’s not). Others noticed that their winning streaks and predictable distributions were not imported (fixed later). Still, there’s a fear that subscription-based Times will eventually hide the game behind a paywall—which is why you might want to download Wordle to continue playing it for free.
Twitter user Aaron Rike posted a thread explaining how Wordle runs entirely in your web browser. You don’t technically need internet to play Wordle, as all future Daily Words of the game are included directly in the webpage (even on the NYT). If you download Wordle’s web archive, the game only needs your device’s current date to deliver a new word puzzle each day.
If you want to continue playing Wordle for free, read on to learn how to download Wordle to your computer or smartphone.
Also, if one puzzle a day isn’t enough, try some of the wordal clones like Abserdal and Nerdle or check out every wordal puzzle created in the wordal archive.
Now all you have to do is click on the downloaded HTML file to open the saved Wordle webpage. Now you can access it while offline. However, it won’t import your previous streaks, so it’s as if you’re playing it for the first time.