Does DuckDuckGo log IP addresses or share them with partners?

1. What DuckDuckGo publicly claims about IP logging

DuckDuckGo’s privacy policy repeatedly states the company “doesn’t save your IP address or any unique identifiers alongside your searches or visits” and that it “never log[s] IP addresses or any unique identifiers to disk that could be tied back to you or to your search and browsing history,” language the company uses as a core privacy promise ^[1]. The help pages add that DuckDuckGo performs a GEO::IP lookup to guess location for local results and then “throw[s] away the IP address,” asserting no server-side retention consistent with the privacy policy ^[3].

2. How DuckDuckGo says IPs are used in practice

According to DuckDuckGo, IP addresses are necessarily visible to the infrastructure that routes internet traffic and therefore are used transiently to deliver content, and they may be processed temporarily for bot detection and security; the company says this information is not logged to disk or stored alongside search data ^[1]. For localized search results the service performs a GEO::IP lookup, uses a randomized “nearby” location to shield precise coordinates, and does not retain the raw IP on their servers, per their help documentation ^[3].

3. Limits of that protection — who can still see an IP

DuckDuckGo acknowledges that it cannot prevent an internet user’s IP from being observed by the user’s ISP, hosting providers, or other network intermediaries that route packets between endpoints, because IP routing is a technical necessity of the Internet ^[1]. That means the company’s no-logs promise is about what DuckDuckGo itself records and shares, not about erasing the fact that network infrastructure must see source IPs ^[1].

4. Exceptions, abuse mitigation, and product differences

Public-facing analyses and marketing pieces note that companies with “no-logs” policies often take reactive steps to block or rate-limit abusive IP addresses, which can require short-term IP-based detection; while DuckDuckGo’s policy asserts no long-term logging, third-party commentary reasons that temporary or in-memory handling for abuse mitigation is plausible ^[4]. Separately, DuckDuckGo’s VPN product is explicitly designed to hide a device’s IP from websites and ISPs while connected, and reviewers clarify that the search engine/browser on its own does not hide a user’s IP — the VPN does that job ^{[2] [5]}.

5. Independent verification and industry context

Multiple reviews and guides restate DuckDuckGo’s no-logs claim and recommend combining the browser with a VPN for network-level anonymity, but there is limited material in the provided sources about independent, third-party audits of DuckDuckGo’s logging practices in this dataset; some sites repeat the company line or infer reasonable operational practices ^{[4] [2] [6] [5]}. That means outside of DuckDuckGo’s own documentation and secondary reviews, the supplied reporting does not include an independent technical audit proving the absence of any persistent IP logging in all contexts (p1_s1–p1_s6).

6. Bottom line — what can be stated with confidence

Based on DuckDuckGo’s privacy policy and help pages, the company states it does not log IP addresses to disk or retain them alongside search histories and uses GEO::IP only transiently for localization, while acknowledging that ISPs and network providers will still see IPs during normal routing ^{[1] [3]}. For users seeking to hide their IP from those intermediaries or to add a network-level layer of anonymity, DuckDuckGo’s separate VPN product or an audited third-party VPN is the relevant solution ^{[2] [5]}. The supplied reporting supports DuckDuckGo’s no-logs claim as its stated policy, but does not contain independent forensic proof in this set of sources that would conclusively rule out any form of transient or operational IP handling beyond what DuckDuckGo describes (p1_s1–p1_s6).