DDG is just Bing under the hood
And Searx is the same. And startpage is just google.
But the point is they don’t track.
DDG was letting Bing track users. They may have stopped now that they got in trouble for it.
Wait really?
Best I could find was this arstechnica article from 2022:
Microsoft trackers run afoul of DuckDuckGo, get added to blocklist: Search privacy company still needs Bing, but won’t allow Microsoft’s trackers. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/microsoft-trackers-run-afoul-of-duckduckgo-get-added-to-blocklist/
deleted by creator
Yeah that would be it:
Previously, we were limited in how we could apply our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection on Microsoft tracking scripts due to a policy requirement related to our use of Bing as a source for our private search results
I couldn’t remember the details exactly, but basically up until then they were allowing Microsoft tracking despite all their advertising claiming they wouldn’t track users.