Updated: April 25, 2025
In modern times, trying to minimize one's digital footprint is mostly an exercise in futility, with a dollop of placebo, for good measure. But the thing is, even if the efforts are somewhat sisyphean, one must persist, because that's what being a peasant is all about. Being anti is so hot right now, on mobile devices, in particular. On a more serious note, if you want to use your smartphone without being constantly profiled and surveilled, you must take steps to reduce these pointless garbage activities.
DuckDuckGo's browser offers some relief when it comes to online probing and busybodying by companies big and small alike. It comes with a built-in mechanism called App Tracking Protection (ATP), which, if turned on, will then funnel app traffic through its own filters, and try to stop and block various trackers embedded in these apps. This ought to minimize the amount of nonsense assailing your device. There's a bigger philosophical question of how you could perhaps eliminate the problem from the start, but that's a slightly separate topic. Now, let's take a look at this functionality, and see how it works.
What it is and what it isn't
For all practical purposes, DDG's ATP is de facto a VPN. On non-rooted Android phones, the only practical way you can control network traffic is to create a funnel for network connections, and then selectively allow or disallow certain bits and pieces. You achieve this by using VPN.
This method has certain limitations. Notably, you cannot have two VPNs active at the same time. So if you use ATP, you can't use other VPNs, which offer additional functionality to just tracker blocking. For example, some paid VPN services actually offer ad-and-tracker blocking, simply by using their own DNS lists to allow certain queries. But this is only effective if ads and trackers come from separate domains to the traffic you actually seek. If they are embedded alongside the core content, this method won't work. Indeed, big, sophisticated content providers often do this, and they don't need to rely on third-party servers.
Furthermore, if you use DDG's ATP, you can't "hide" your IP address. There's also the question of how the traffic is routed through the VPN. Does all traffic go through, or only for apps that are covered and protected by ATP, which would mean split tunneling? We will take a closer look soon.
So, 'tis like a VPN, a free VPN, and if you use it, from that point on, your network traffic goes through DuckDuckGo. This means instead of having a dozen different apps selectively "see" your data, one application now has a more centralized visibility of your network activity. Now, this does not make DDG suspicious or nefarious or anything like that. Moreover, if the traffic is encrypted, DDG's ATP cannot see the traffic content, and can only perform rudimentary allow/block based on available domain endpoints. But still, effectively, you do let it see what you're doing, network wise.
Let's get going
The usage is pretty straightforward. In the DDG browser, go into Settings and toggle on the App Tracking Protection. You can now go into a more detailed menu, where you can choose which apps to include or exclude in the tracking, as well as examine a real-time report of any tracker blocking. Fairly easy to use.
ATP will preselect all of your apps, except a number of apps known not to cooperate well with the functionality. These include Android Auto, Chrome, Firefox, Gmail, Google Play Store, and then some. I am not sure why these apps may misbehave, but it could be for the aforementioned first/third-party domain bundling. If trackers are part of the top-level content source, then it is very hard to perform any sort of network traffic blocking. It can be done by say adblocking in a browser, once the content arrives and is decrypted. But not before. Just to mention it, Firefox wise, you don't need this, as Firefox supports the amazing UBlock Origin (UBO) extension, which lets you block ads and trackers. But this only applies for the browser.
The list also does not include any system apps. This is a shame, because that effectively means these are probably completely excluded from ATP. If I understanding it correctly, this does imply a split-tunnel VPN functionality. System apps route their traffic outside the VPN, your normal apps all go through the VPN, but only those with APT enabled have the blocking rules applied. It is also possible that excluded apps aren't covered by the VPN at all, but I've not been able to ascertain that from the documentation. In my logic, they ought to be completely excluded, especially stuff like banking apps or similar.
I decided to follow DDG's recommendations, I also manually excluded a couple of apps, I purposefully enabled it for a few, just to see what gives (like WhatsApp, which is on the default exclude list), and then fired up a bunch of app, and began using them. After a couple of minutes, I consulted the ATP report.
Effective, is it?
The answer is, yes. I have very few apps installed, on purpose. I also try to choose apps that are simple and sensible, if possible. Indeed, VLC and ReadEra generated zero tracking alerts. Interestingly, WhatsApp and Telegram also triggered none. CNBC and HERE WeGo had a bunch. With the former, just opening the app resulted in roughly 70-90 tracking attempts being blocked each time. With the latter, I could watch the counter go up, in real time, 2-3 tracking attempts every few seconds. This is not unlike using UBO in a regular browser, and watching the counter increment.
Interestingly, "known to collect" does not necessarily mean it is actively being collected in this case, though.
I wonder how these trackers align with GDPR and such. If they do, then the information is "supposedly" anonymous, although it is technically possible to create highly individual profiles from anonymous data. You simply needs lots of data.
The big question is, did this make any difference when it comes to app usage? Well, CNBC was a tiny bit slower to respond, but there were no more ads shown. HERE WeGo was also a tad more sluggish, but worked normally otherwise. All in all, ATP did not seem to make my apps seppuku themselves. Across my entire repertoire of apps, these were the only two offenders.
Overall value & battery usage
And this brings up my previous question. If only say 2 out of 25-30 apps are naughty so to speak, why not remove them, and be done with it? Or let them be, as I use them sporadically, and there's little data crossing the app boundaries anyway. Since I've disabled every possible sharing, analytics and other vector available through the Android UI, the noise levels are much lower than what happens by default. So these two are already isolated, in a way. This also shows that I've sort of tamed my Android reasonably well.
Based on my "app" estate, the question is then, should I have a VPN running nonstop for 90-95% traffic that generates zero alerts, and really needs not be monitored? Once again, I would like to know whether ATP is active for all the listed apps, or if there's actual proper split-tunneling after all. If I can ONLY VPN "rogue" apps, that would reduce the network activity, and power usage, too.
I haven't ascertained the battery impact just yet, but from my limited testing, the effect was moderate. If you look at the screenshots above, in 17 minutes of "heavy" usage, my battery went from 62% to 54%. Taking into account I was surfing, testing, playing with apps, and taking screenshots, it's still a big drop. Without the VPN in place, the drainage would have been about 20% lower. We shall see long term, though. In general, VPN aside, my A54 battery depletion isn't linear. It's "slow" down to about half the electron juice level, and then it accelerates, until you can almost watch the countdown in real time. Not quite as dramatic, but you get the gist. The battery life has also gone down quite some following a bunch of system updates in the last 18 months or so. That's another element. For now, it seems that ATP adds some overhead. It's not major, but it's there.
Back to the apps with trackers, they are annoying and perhaps pointless. I truly detest the whole user profiling nonsense. Then again, on a practical level, if you are sensible with how you use your devices, you separate important and non-important bits, you use multiple devices for different things, you use an adblocker, and you use throwaway emails to sign up for throwaway things, the tracking is meaningless. You could say, let them waste their bandwidth profiling a user with minimal social or cultural intersection. In this regard, having everything flow through DDG's ATP actually creates data focus (even if entirely benign). This is a rather interesting topic on its own.
This is not the case for the majority of people, of course. But if you can nip the stupidity in the bud, then it's much better than mitigating later along the way. Make sure your activities cannot benefit the greedy, and you solve the problem, tracking or no tracking. And then, just for the sake of it, do exercise some extra pruning and purging, for sheer enjoyment.
Conclusion
I found DuckDuckGo's App Tracking Protection to be a pretty nice, useful thing. One, you get it with the browser, even if you don't often use the browser or set it as the default one. Two, DuckDuckGo are okay when it comes to privacy (there are no angels, mind). Three, the usage is simple, and you can easily include or exclude apps. So far so good.
There are a few other considerations, though. It's a shame you can't include system apps, and I still need an answer if the excluded apps are still filtered (with permissive rules in place) or not, AKA split tunneling. And the service is free, so yes, you may think, if it's free then I'm the product, right. Always a good thing to have in your mind, benevolent intentions notwithstanding. So far, DuckDuckGo have not given the users any reasons for suspicion, I think, but the digital landscape is a fickle one, and if you look at what we had 10 years ago, and how things are now, it's hard to be optimistic. At the very least, today, right now, ATP is useful, practical and simple to configure. And it does help. But remember, the best thing you can do is avoid stupid software to begin with. That's the finest cure.
Time to end this article. I've covered DuckDuckGo's solutions many times over the years. The search engine, the browser, now the tracking protection. I've found these tools and utilities to be sensible and practical and pragmatic. Perhaps the proof that you can balance privacy with a successful business model, even if you offer your services for free. Worth trying, if nothing else. Take care, fellas.
Cheers.