DuckDuckGo made a deal with the devil. Due to a confidential search agreement, the DuckDuckGo browser does not block all Microsoft trackers. What’s worse, DuckDuckGo only acknowledged this “privacy hole” after it was discovered by a security researcher."
https://www.reviewgeek.com/118915/duckduckgo-isnt-as-private-as-you-thought/
Wonderful, isn't it? After the last Bing incident, then the censoring fiasco, then this.
It should be obvious they were full of shit because how else would they make money? They make it through either selling data or ads. And ads that aren't targeted towards you(they need your data to do this) pay like shit. They weren't running a search engine out of the kindness out of their heart, free of charge.