Privacy-focused browser DuckDuckGo has announced the general availability of App Tracking Protection – a beta feature that blocks third-party trackers in device apps – on the Android side of DuckDuckGo.

App Tracking Protection feature blocks on Androidknown trackers,It establishes a purely local VPN connection on the device, and traffic through the VPN and trackers is automatically blocked when it detects third-party tracker activity.

In fact, this tracking protection feature was launched last year, but it was criticized at the time because it did not work for many applications, lacked the option to customize protection, and the tracker list was not public. Most deadly, due to a search federation agreement with Microsoft, the DuckDuckGo browser intentionally let Microsoft trackers go.

The newly released tracking protection function takes effect on more applications, and discloses the list of blocked trackers, and users can view the detailed information of blocked trackers.

However, this function still needs to be further improved. The trackers it blocks rely heavily on the tracker data known by DuckDuckGo, and it does not support user-defined addition of other trackers.

Also, some applications (notably browsers) are not affected by this feature. In the test of foreign media Ghacks,Seventeen of the more than 120 apps on the test device were not protected by the feature, including Firefox, Chrome and Brave, the Google Play Store and Android Auto, WhatsApp and YouTube, among others.

In addition, domestic mobile phone manufacturers seem to have developed similar functions in their Android magic changes, such as Xiaomi’s “Privacy Flare”, which allows you to view all permissions, requests, and background activities of apps.