A new warning for Android users, as the staggering number of “creepy” trackers hidden in popular apps is suddenly exposed. Apple has already killed this spyware for iPhone users, and a free new app has just been launched to do the same on Android.
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency has turned the digital advertising industry upside down this year, wiping billions of dollars from the revenue lines of Facebook and others. The brilliant innovation forces apps to ask iPhone users for explicit permission before they can track those users from app to app or across the web.
When this new privacy feature was first touted, the industry amusingly hoped that users would opt into tracking to better tailor the ads that were following them around online. The rest of us could see that hope was pure fantasy. Predictably, users have not opted into being tracked, with the vast majority saying no. Who’d a thought?
App Tracking Transparency
Google has copied Apple’s innovations before; it might be dragging its feet, but Apple has set a privacy agenda that it cannot ignore. That’s why you now have much better control over the data on your phone, protection for location tracking, warnings when apps tap into the camera or microphone and time-boxed app permissions.
But Google is the digital ad giant—behind the scenes of Android, Chrome and its other platforms, you will find a spider’s web of trackers and data algorithms. And so, when it comes to app tracking, the tech giant is in the same bind as it is with third-party tracking cookies on Chrome and privacy labels.
Cue DuckDuckGo. The privacy-first search engine and browser extension has now stepped in to fill the Google-shaped gap when it comes to app tracking. It has just launched a beta of its new App Tracking Protection, blocking apps on your Android device from tracking your phone and tapping into your data. The intent is to bring Android users the same level of protection as iPhone users now have.
DuckDuckGo told me it has the “largest and most comprehensive list of trackers in the industry.” Even Apple uses this dataset to verify trackers blocked in Safari. “We want to protect people where they are and spend most of their time within mobile apps,” the team explained. “Over the years we have invested in tracker radar, making it possible to identify companies and techniques that track people online.”
App Tracking Protection
As the company says, “these hidden app trackers are super creepy because they can track everything you do in an app and also can continue to track you even when you’re not using the app. Many are designed to record your activity in real time: where you are, what you’re doing, where you’ve been, even how many hours you sleep at night.”
DuckDuckGo says that 96% of the Android apps it tested contained such hidden trackers; 87% of those sent data back to Google and 68% to Facebook. While there’s little surprise in the Facebook stat, the Google stat should be an eye-opener.
Remember, Google is behind the Android OS, it’s behind the new privacy protections that have been added in Android 10 and 11. It’s poacher and gamekeeper. This is the same criticism that has been levelled at the company over Chrome (the world’s most popular browser) and its control of 75% of web trackers.
“Google and Facebook are able to spy on almost everything you do on your phone,” DuckDuckGo told me, where you go with it, and so on.” The team told me that even where users reset their Android Advertising ID, which supposedly helps stop ongoing tracking, it’s of little use. “Apps send multiple other identifiers that are persistent, including information on the device, email addresses and GPS locations.”
I put the tracking protection to the test, installing four fresh apps (at random) on the phone, and then doing no more than opening each app once. Within a few minutes, the new DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection reported more than 60 tracking attempts across those four apps. Let’s think that through—I installed an app, opened it, and the app immediately contacted its handlers and started spying on me and my activities.
App Tracking Protection
The DuckDuckGo solution can be found in its existing app. It offers the same broad protection as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, but has two core differences.
First, unlike on an iPhone, once you install and enable the protection, it works across all apps on the device. You don’t need to manage settings app by app, and you’re not relying on each of those apps to adhere to your preferences. While that difference is good, the drawback is that some apps that access websites as part of their core functionality might not work properly. You’ll see those identified in the dashboard.
Second, the technology works by creating a local VPN on the phone, one that’s programmed with the URLs of the tracking sites that the mainstream trackers in your apps will try to visit. It simply blocks that traffic. While this solution is more robust than telling apps to ignore a user’s advertising identifier, if you enable a full VPN when travelling or using public Wi-Fi, the DuckDuckGo solution is suspended.
Just as with its recent solution to block mail tracking, DuckDuckGo has initiated App Tracking protection as a private beta, meaning you can join a waitlist, with more users being given access each week. “We decided to release App Tracking Protection in beta while we work on getting the experience just right. While it’s in beta, there are a small number of apps being excluded because they rely on tracking to work properly. We hope to reduce this list even further over time.‌‌”
This hidden data collection fuels the algorithms that influence how we feel, think and shop. “This data,” DuckDuckGo says, “enables tracking networks like Facebook and Google to create even more detailed digital profiles on you… Tracking networks can manipulate what you see online, target you with ads based on your behavior, and even sell your data to other companies like data brokers, advertisers, and governments.”
Apple’s ATT has been a huge success, an immediate game-changer for iPhone privacy, killing much of the app tracking potential on those devices. Now DuckDuckGo hopes to do the same for those Android users installing its new update.
I have approached Facebook and Google for any response to the release of this new technology or the scale of their hidden tracking it has exposed. Meanwhile, you can join the App Tracking Protection waitlist through DuckDuckGo’s app.

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