Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating for google here. They are basically evil. The truth is that DDG does collect data and serve ads. By doing so that means they are not private like they advertise. Just do a search. Your first results will be marked as ad spots. The only way to get around this is to use a search engine aggregator such as searx or something self hosted then have lots of people use that to obscure the collection and profile generation. Point is DDG is not a golden child here. It’s a company just like any other in data mining markets.