DDG has never been able to secure my trust. I am an IT professional who has rigorously tested dozens of search engines. My five favorites are: Brave, MetaGer, Mojeek, Qwant, and Swisscows -- none of which are hosted in the USA. DDG is nearly as insecure as Google or BIng.
DDG's lack of transparency in operating policies, blocking trackers, yet allowing some trackers (anonymous or not) without clearly informing users destroys trust and credibility.
Hi, we have a help page that explains our web tracking protection in detail. If you're interested, you can check it out here: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/web-tracking-protections/ Also, many of our products are open source so you can look into them for yourself.
