Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has been restored in India after many users there have been unable to access it since July 1, Android Police reported. Reports of the cause of the outage have varied. Some users reported that the Indian government appeared to be behind the block, and others said they were receiving what appeared to be DNS lookup errors, according to Android Police.
DuckDuckGo tweeted that the service appeared to have been restored in India as of Saturday morning.
We are seeing our services being extensively restored in India. Thank you for all your reports, calling attention to this problem.
If you are still having trouble accessing DuckDuckGo Search, please report it to @internetfreedom using this form: https://t.co/jVYFgXTiV7
– DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) July 4, 2020
On June 29, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology banned more than 50 China-based applications, including TikTok and WeChat, saying they were “involved in activities … detrimental to the sovereignty and integrity of the India, “according to a press release.
It’s unclear if Pennsylvania-based DuckDuckGo may have been inadvertently blocked as part of that larger effort, or if there was another reason for the blackout. DuckDuckGo was not on the Indian government’s list of banned apps on June 29.
DuckDuckGo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
