Privacy Policy

1. We do not save your emails.

   When we receive an email to a duck.com address, we immediately remove trackers then forward it to its destination. This all happens in memory; your emails are never even written to disk.

2. We only save the minimum amount of personal information we need for the service to function.

   • The forwarding email address you provide to us when you sign up for the service.

   • The Duck Addresses you create.

3. We do not use your personal information for any purpose unrelated to this service.

   For example, if you choose to sign in to Email Protection within our apps or extensions via your personal Duck Address, we use only the minimal necessary local storage to keep you signed in. We do not sell any personal information (for example, your email address).

4. We aim to block as many hidden trackers as possible.

   New trackers emerge all the time and blocking some may harm usability. So while we can’t promise to block all trackers, we're working continuously to expand our email tracker blocking over time to respond to new email tracking methods.

5. We will only disclose personal information if we are legally forced to do so, and we will use legal means to fight against such disclosure.

   If required by law to disclose your personal information (for example, your email address), we will notify you by email unless legally forbidden.

6. We do not use third-party email services to forward your email.

   We developed our own software to send and receive email.

7. We protect our infrastructure and your personal information with strict technical and organizational controls.

   Your personal information (for example, your email address) is stored encrypted in our database which itself resides on an encrypted disk. We use encrypted network connections wherever possible. We also have strict access control and monitoring mechanisms in place, which may automatically block (but never log to disk) IP addresses that are abusing our infrastructure, though even in that abuse scenario, those IP addresses cannot be connected to any personal information. Our corporate systems use data centers across the world and may transfer data among them. Finally, our infrastructure providers have their own abuse prevention systems independent from ours. We do not provide them (or anyone) access to our servers, and as a secondary precaution, we additionally bind them to strict data protection agreements.

8. We offer support.

   We offer support at support@duck.com and through email breakage reporting forms via links within the service and have strict access controls for information you voluntarily send to us. Additionally, our corporate systems use some software-as-a-service components (for example, our company email and project management software) that are all bound by strict data protection agreements. Email breakage submissions are automatically removed from our systems after 30 days.

   If you flag emails as spam, your personal email provider may forward them to us. If they do so, then parts of these flagged spam emails (metadata) will be saved temporarily in order to troubleshoot the spam issue, but we will only store this information for no more than 90 days.

9. We promptly honor requests to delete your account.

   You can delete your account by visiting https://duckduckgo.com/email/delete-account or request deletion by reaching out to support@duck.com. We keep 30 days of backups, so it will take 30 days from the resolution of your deletion request for it to be completely removed from our systems, unless we are required by law to keep it longer. Upon account deletion, your Duck Addresses will be deactivated and will no longer be associated with your deleted forwarding address. These deleted Duck Addresses cannot be used by anyone, including you, in the future.

10. We respect and support your legal privacy rights.

    Privacy laws in some jurisdictions provide certain rights with respect to the limited personal information we may hold about you (for example, your email address) from using the service or from your reaching out to contact us. For information about these rights, such as requesting deletion or a copy of your personal information, please review our Privacy Rights page. If you have any questions or complaints, or feedback with respect to this Privacy Policy, you may contact us at:

    • Email privacy@duckduckgo.com.

    • Telephone: 1-888-395-0534 (toll-free from the US; international cell phone roaming charges may apply).

    • Mailing address: DuckDuckGo, 20 Paoli Pike, Paoli, PA 19301, U.S.A.

11. We will not allow an ownership change to weaken this Privacy Policy.

    If we are ever acquired by another organization, or if another organization purchases this service, we will email you with details. However, we will not proceed with any deal that weakens this Privacy Policy.

12. We will post a notice on our website when our policy is updated.

    We will notify you of changes by posting the modified version on our website. We will indicate the date it was last modified below with an update message on top if substantive changes were made.

    For more information about the privacy of our services beyond Email Protection, please see our general Privacy Policy.