DuckDuckGo launched a new privateness instrument for Android Wednesday that may assist defend you from the businesses harvesting private information by way of your apps. The new App Tracking Protection function, now accessible in beta within the DuckDuckGo for Android app, will let customers reap the benefits of among the privateness protections already loved by iPhone customers.

The firm’s App Tracking Protection instrument doesn’t simply block the information assortment, it additionally offers you a firsthand have a look at what info apps are attempting to reap and the place they’re attempting to ship it. DuckDuckGo spent the final 12 months testing the function with actual customers. The function is simple to make use of. All you must do is set up the DuckDuckGo app, open Settings, choose “App Tracking Protection,” and observe the onscreen directions.

According to Peter Dolanjski, director of product at DuckDuckGo, folks had no thought how unhealthy the information assortment actually was. “People were absolutely baffled, not just at the number of requests apps are making but also the kind of data involved” he stated.

Data and promoting companies like Meta, Google, and numerous others earn cash by monitoring your conduct throughout apps and web sites owned by different corporations. App builders share your information with third events by sending it instantly out of your telephone to company servers, utilizing snippets of code referred to as trackers. The App Tracking Protection instrument spots when an app is attempting to ship info to a 3rd get together tracker and blocks most of these transmissions.

App Tracking Protection runs within the background of your day-to-day telephone use, however if you happen to open it up, the DuckDuckGo app offers you an actual time abstract of the makes an attempt to gather your information. The numbers will likely be staggering if you happen to aren’t accustomed to the interior workings of tech merchandise.

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According to DuckDuckGo, the average Android user has about 35 apps on their phone. In their tests, a phone with 35 apps on it will send about 1,000-2,000 packets of tracking data to over 70 different tracking companies every day—but that number can be far worse depending on which apps you use.

Along with details about your behavior, that data also includes personally identifiable information including your location, email address, phone number, ID numbers, data used for device fingerprinting, and more.

Users who tested out the feature were alarmed. “People told us the most shocking thing was when they woke up in the morning to pick up the phone and saw all the tracking that happened overnight while they were asleep,” Dolanjski said. “It just makes it all the more creepy when you realize it’s happening in the background.”

Apple introduced a similarly named privacy setting last year called App Tracking Transparency. The setting, which caused an earthquake in the tech industry (Meta said the setting cost it $10 billion in a year), gave iPhone users some of best, easy-to-use privacy protection available to date. But Android doesn’t offer anything similar built-in to the operating system. There are a number of other tracker protection tools Android users can install, but DuckDuckGo’s offering is free and built by a company with a history of protecting users’ privacy.

In fact, DuckDuckGo’s privacy tool is even more powerful than Apple’s offering in some ways. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency takes a policy-based approach, telling apps they’re not allows to track users and making it impossible to collect an ID number used for adverting. DuckDuckGo’s tool applies more broadly; rather than protecting certain data points, it blocks communication with many third parties altogether, no matter what kind of data is involved.

“We feel that its necessary to block the requests of these trackers outright to stop that data being collected,” Dolanjski stated. The firm selected to convey the function to Android first as a result of customers don’t have any significant built-in safety. “Apart from Google introducing additional controls in the future, you’re not going to be able the data collection any other way,” he stated. DuckDuckGo is contemplating including the function to its iPhone app sooner or later.