DuckDuckGo has added sharing to Duck.ai, letting people send a conversation that recipients can read, save or continue without needing an account. The feature is available now, and shared links expire after 48 hours unless the sender chooses another duration. DuckDuckGo says the conversations are encrypted before upload, with the decryption key carried in the link so the company cannot read them.
Senders can share an individual response or the conversation through the point they select, using the share icon below a response. A menu beside each conversation in the chat list also provides a way to share the whole chat. Generated images travel with the shared conversation, but uploaded files are excluded.
Recipients can build on the shared conversation independently: their subsequent messages remain private to them, while the sender's later messages remain private to the sender. Deleting a link does not revoke a copy that a recipient has already saved. DuckDuckGo also cautions that recipients can pass the contents to other people or preserve them outside Duck.ai, regardless of the link's privacy protections.
Users can choose an expiration of one, two, seven or 30 days, and the company says it removes the shared conversation from its servers once that period ends. The Shared Chats area in Duck.ai Settings lists created links and their expiration dates, with controls to delete them early. The Fire Button can now remove shared links as well as clear chats.
Each link combines a reference to the encrypted conversation with its decryption key, which sits after the # character in the URL. DuckDuckGo says browsers generally omit that portion when contacting servers, and that it tested the feature to keep keys out of logs, telemetry and error reporting. The encryption happens on the user's device before the conversation reaches DuckDuckGo's servers.
DuckDuckGo says its long, randomized links resist guessing, while shared pages instruct search engines to exclude them through both page content and server responses. Users have no option to make those pages discoverable through search. Previously, transferring a Duck.ai conversation to someone else required copying and pasting text, rather than giving the recipient a conversation they could continue.
