Im a little sketched out by DuckDuckGo lately tbh. Now yes, clearly you could just use Tor + the DuckDuckGo onion link and be fine, but still, you can't trust anything these days.

🚩 Some red flags:

Uses Bing API. (Owned by Microsoft)

Is in USA. (20 Paoli Pike, Paoli, PA 19301)

They have violated their privacy policy in the past.

Collects "anonymous" analytics about you using tracking pixels.

Some Sources:
https://duckduckgo.com/about
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/duckduckgo.html
https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-Bing-API-used-by-DuckDuckGo