Don’t sign in with Google
Welcome to Advisorator’s Tip of the Week, helping you learn something new from the tech world every Tuesday.
Have you noticed more websites asking you to “Sign in with Google” lately? This can be convenient if you already have a Google account, but it also gives the company permission to track your behavior in more places. The pop-ups are also just plain annoying if you’d rather keep all your logins organized in a password manager.
That’s why DuckDuckGo is now blocking Google’s sign-in prompts in its mobile browser and desktop browser extensions. The feature is enabled by default, so you needn’t do anything to hide Google’s pop-ups from view.
Unfortunately, DuckDuckGo’s apps and browser extensions still force you to use the DuckDuckGo search engine. If that’s a problem, Google has its own hidden setting to turn off “Sign in with Google” prompts in any web browser, regardless of which search engine you use.
Just head to this page while signed into your Google account, then scroll down to find the “Google Account sign-in prompts” toggle. You’ll still be able to sign into apps and sites with your Google account, but you won’t see any pushy pop-ups along the way.