Indonesia bans DuckDuckGo search engine on gambling, porn concerns

Indonesia said it has banned the privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo, citing concerns that it could be used to access pornography and online gambling websites which are illegal in the country, the communications ministry said on Friday.

Indonesia, with the world’s biggest Muslim population, has strict rules that ban the sharing online of content deemed obscene. Social media platform Reddit and video-hosting platform Vimeo are blocked.

Usman Kansong, a communications ministry official, told Reuters that DuckDuckGo had been blocked “because of the many complaints made to us about the rampant online gambling and pornography content in its search results”.

Pennsylvania-based and privately owned DuckDuckGo did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal US business hours.

The ministry did not say how DuckDuckGo differs from other search engines such as Alphabet’s Google but on its website, DuckDuckGo said it offered several products intended to “help people protect their online privacy” including the search engine, which it said has been praised by privacy advocates.

Indonesia has vowed to crack down on online gambling in recent months and has banned access to several such websites. Though illegal, government data showed 3 million Indonesians went online to gamble last year, spending an estimated US$20 billion, or about 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product.