But recently I saw that third party elements of improving.duckduckgo.com are appearing every time I visit a link that I clicked in a duckduckgo search.
uMatrix doesn't categorise it as script or XHR, but simply as 'other'. And the element seems only to be requested when coming directly from the search result, not like the google stuff that is usually always there.
Does someone know what is going on here? Do I need to worry that ddg is becoming the next google?
> Any requests to this domain -- improving.duckduckgo.com -- are part of this anonymous experiment engine. You can learn more about how this technology works and how it was designed to protect your privacy here.
Which then links to here (https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/atb/), where it says:
> Second, we measure engagement of specific events on the page (e.g. when a misspelling message is displayed, and when it is clicked). This allows us to run experiments where we can test different misspelling messages and use CTR (click through rate) to determine the message's efficacy. If you are looking at network requests, these are the ones going to the one-pixel image at improving.duckduckgo.com. These requests are anonymous and the information is used only by us to improve our products.
But it does not tell how it could end up on other domains. Are you sure it is not part of the DDG result page or extension ?
I use uBlock so I do not check every request.
It's come out later from comms execs within DDG that this is due to Bing following EU rules about down ranking, and the technical reason here is the least interesting bit. The impassioned defense of it by the founder and CEO is the troublesome part.
Solution: use Brave Search at search.brave.com.