DuckDuckGo Unbanned in India after a Ban on July 1st. The ban came as a shock to many after users of the search engine reported the site being blocked by the ISP’s. The privacy first search engine is now back to almost all of the users.

DuckDuckGo Unbanned in India after a Ban on July 1st

DuckDuckGo is an internet search engine that focuses on protecting searchers’ privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of custom search results. DuckDuckGo distinguishes apart from other search engines by not profiling its users and giving all users the same search results for a given search word.

The ban on DuckDuckGo might be an accidental one as a result of the 59 Chinese applications that were banned by the Indian Government as a result of the border skirmishes with the Chinese army. DuckDuckGo isn’t Chinese, it is a company from Pennsylvania, USA.

To our users in India: We’ve received many reports our search engine is unreachable by much of India right now and have confirmed it is not due to us. We’re actively talking to Internet providers to get to the bottom of it ASAP. Thank you for your patience.

— DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) July 1, 2020

After the users reported the block to DuckDuckGo, the company prompted to write letters to the Indian Government and the Indian ISP’s to explain the reason for the block. The company had recommended using the 1.1.1.1 DNS for using the search engine.

After some research users found a way out of the ban as the ISP’s were using their own DNS’s as a checkpoint and when one switched to a third party one, they could use the search engine again.

Although some ISPs are currently removing their blocks, the situation is still very uncertain. Most people seem to have been impacted by the ban, though others claim that DuckDuckGo remained within control. Some providers have attached a warning that the Indian Telecommunications Department has blocked the website, while others are merely sending out failed DNS lookup errors.