Some things that happen when I go to duckduckgo.com that also go against that:
Harvesting the third-party cookies it can (example: github.com)
Attempting to enumerate browser extensions
Attempting to enumerate crypto wallet addresses from extension wallets like MetaMask
It’s extremely nosy. They used to do canvas fingerprinting until browsers started prompting about it.
IDK about the claim of directly selling searches to IG and likely it’s a bit more convoluted than that (or OP has malware) but it’s a more believable idea than that of DDG actually being respectful of user privacy. There is absolutely no legitimate reason for DDG to gather this data for the purpose of providing their search service, yet they do.
Some things that happen when I go to duckduckgo.com that also go against that:
It’s extremely nosy. They used to do canvas fingerprinting until browsers started prompting about it.
IDK about the claim of directly selling searches to IG and likely it’s a bit more convoluted than that (or OP has malware) but it’s a more believable idea than that of DDG actually being respectful of user privacy. There is absolutely no legitimate reason for DDG to gather this data for the purpose of providing their search service, yet they do.