DuckDuckGo’s complete shtick is privateness, so it’s not unexpected that the corporate makes its personal VPN—as long as you pay for it. Now, there are a large number of VPNs in the market, and the most productive ones do in most cases require a price, however it could noticed at the floor that DuckDuckGo’s choices have been as forged a decision as every other equivalent provider. In fact, there may be at all times the query of privateness and safety anytime you utilize a provider like this: How smartly is that this VPN actually running? Is the corporate at the back of it secretly having access to my surfing knowledge as I exploit the app?
DuckDuckGo appears to be assured on this house: The corporate employed unbiased cybersecurity company Securitum to behavior an audit of its “no-logs” coverage, which means that that no consumer knowledge, incluiding job, timestamps, or metadata, is logged or saved at the corporate’s egress servers—at the infrastructure used when transferring knowledge outdoor of the corporate’s severs to the consumer. Securitum ran its audit from October 2025 to January of this 12 months, sending two of its senior safety experts to review the engineering group at DuckDuckGo.
Secutirum’s file unearths DuckDuckGo complies with its no-logs coverage
Following its investigation, Securitum made up our minds that DuckDuckGo’s VPN appears to be a protected selection—no less than in line with the spaces it used to be taking a look into. Securitum showed DuckDuckGo does now not observe or log consumer job on its egress servers, after reviewing random reside egress servers and discovering no proof of job monitoring. It discovered that DuckDuckGo does now not log user-attributable connection metadata, like DNS site visitors, and whilst it makes use of a caching gadget for higher efficiency, the knowledge is at all times purged after a “usual” 24 hours. Plus, this cache isn’t designed in some way which may be obtainable after the knowledge is destroyed.
The audit discovered that DuckDuckGo’s VPN does now not check out or log consumer community site visitors on its VPN servers, and that the “Rip-off Blocker” function is designed to run in the community at the consumer’s software—now not on DuckDuckGo’s servers. The VPN does not track what websites or servers you might be having access to, both, which is a crucial element of any VPN. Securitum did have some positive grievance for DuckDuckGo right here, recommending the corporate use “enhanced report integrity,” one thing DuckDuckGo has already applied following the advice. The VPN does not use servers which can be shared with different companies or provider suppliers, and this no-logs coverage applies to all servers and areas—so regardless of the place on the planet you might be the use of DuckDuckGo’s VPN, you’ll have the similar regulations follow.
Auditors additionally discovered that, by way of design, it must be tough for log-related configurations to be modified. If truth be told, they discovered that “no unmarried engineer can unilaterally adjust logging configurations or push unapproved code.” In spite of everything, Securitum discovered that each DuckDuckGo’s VPN and Subscription APIs use separate authentication tokens, which guarantees that authorization accounts does now not attach ot person customers or VPN connections.
What do you assume up to now?
This file doesn’t suggest DuckDuckGo’s VPN is best
Securitum’s audit sounds rosy, however this must all be enthusiastic about a grain of salt. The realization in particular says that DuckDuckGo “totally complies with the privateness commitments defined in its No-Logs coverage,” which is superb, however doesn’t suggest that the VPN is best. There may nonetheless be weaknesses right here when in comparison to different VPNs—all we all know is that the audit discovered that DuckDuckGo’s VPNs complies with its No-Logs coverage.
Nonetheless, that is useful context for somebody the use of this VPN. You’ll browse with DuckDuckGo’s VPN leisure confident that the corporate is not storing your surfing knowledge on its servers, even if you find yourself touring.
