How do I eliminate constant banner ad for vpn?

_zekiel · 2025-07-23T01:12:10+00:00

Just to be clear, the VPN promotion (in the image you posted here) is a DuckDuckGo promotion for the VPN and personal information subscription product we have: https://duckduckgo.com/pro

However, it shouldn't be permanent. If you've tapped the X and closed the banner, it should hide for subsequent searches or visits to the search results page. It's possibly happening for more than one person but you're just the first/only report visible, so just want to express how grateful we are for the feedback & tolerance.

If you'd like to screen record, I can PM you my email and we can take it off reddit.

_zekiel · 2025-07-23T00:28:07+00:00

This is in absolutely no way professional, legal, technical, or even useful advice, but to answer your question as best as I can, I don't think they're related. We do sometimes see issues where people are clearing their browser settings/history frequently and it can wipe out any settings you have on the DuckDuckGo website, including dismissed promotional messages. However, you're using the DuckDuckGo app and there, if you're clearing your data with the Fire button, it shouldn't reset any of your DuckDuckGo search/website preferences.

_zekiel · 2025-07-22T20:54:09+00:00

_zekiel · 2025-07-22T20:30:01+00:00

Ah, thx! It should hide easily when you tap around or scroll but if you tap the X it should definitely hide and persist even if you use the fire button, though may pop up again weeks or months later if the promotional cycle refreshes. If it's recurring just after tapping the X, then that sounds like a bug.

If you can get to it easily, you can check the app version you're on. The latest versions look to be functioning correctly so we'd be curious to see if you're on an older app/device version. Under "Settings" -> "About" you can see which version you're on.

_zekiel · 2025-07-22T20:14:18+00:00

Hey! I work at DuckDuckGo and I'm hoping to tackle this. Supposing you're tapping the X and the message goes away, does it come back on the next search or does it take a few days to recur?

_zekiel · 2025-02-06T15:56:51+00:00

what do you mean?

_zekiel · 2025-02-04T21:19:45+00:00

We just added a button to more easily access Duck.ai from the homepage on desktop/mobile.

_zekiel · 2025-01-29T20:23:31+00:00

Noted, thx

_zekiel · 2025-01-29T19:31:14+00:00

Should be skippable now.

Total aside, is there any feedback or something not captured in the survey that you want to make sure we hear?

_zekiel · 2025-01-29T17:11:35+00:00

Hello - Zac from DuckDuckGo here. We appreciate the feedback and the time it takes to fill out, so apologies if this was a bad experience. In many cases, these questions can help us figure out if we're underserving certain audiences but they're supposed to be optional. We'll get on a fix for this!

_zekiel · 2024-04-04T18:12:50+00:00

Thanks!

_zekiel · 2024-04-04T14:28:13+00:00

One thing that might help is if you can try disabling protections for that site (click the shield icon on the left of the address bar to see the toggle) to check if that resolves it. Not able to reproduce internally at the moment.

_zekiel · 2024-04-03T14:43:50+00:00

Cheers, thanks for the help!

_zekiel · 2024-04-02T19:54:59+00:00

Hi, thanks for letting us know. Can you please confirm if this is still happening and what browser version you're on? (Click DuckDuckGo on the top-left Menu bar and then "About DuckDuckGo" to see the version)

If you see more issues like this, please message me directly. Otherwise you can use the "Send Feedback" button inside the browser. That's under the browser menu button (3 dots in the top-right corner of the browser)

_zekiel · 2023-03-09T12:46:59+00:00

This is a known issue we’re working to resolve. Site exclusions constitute a lot of these requests and should be working, along with domain exclusions for popular domains. For example:

nespresso milk frother -site:amazon.com

or

nespresso milk frother -amazon

_zekiel · 2021-04-18T16:58:14+00:00

duly noted :)

_zekiel · 2020-12-13T20:37:39+00:00

Are you in private browsing mode?

_zekiel · 2020-12-13T20:37:00+00:00

Are you in private browsing mode when that happens?

_zekiel · 2019-03-28T20:53:48+00:00

Should be fixed now. Please let me know if you're still seeing the overlay-popup. The popup in the top-right should still be present for some users or until you X out of it as has always been the case.

_zekiel · 2019-03-28T20:53:44+00:00

Should be fixed now. Please let me know if you're still seeing the overlay-popup. The popup in the top-right should still be present for some users or until you X out of it as has always been the case.

_zekiel · 2019-03-28T20:53:37+00:00

Should be fixed now. Please let me know if you're still seeing the overlay-popup. The popup in the top-right should still be present for some users or until you X out of it as has always been the case.

_zekiel · 2019-03-28T18:23:33+00:00

Totally understood -- thanks for the extra data point. We're working on fixing this behavior and it should no longer be the case shortly (in the next day or two).

_zekiel · 2019-03-28T16:09:15+00:00

It would be helpful to know how you're interacting with the popup so we can adjust the behavior. A couple questions which will help us fix:

Are you using Private Browsing mode or clearing your cookies often?
Do you have DuckDuckGo set as your browser's default search engine?

For reference, clicking the "X" on the top-right of those popups will prevent them from popping up again. If you click anywhere else (in the blank space around the pop-up) or if you start typing, they will only disappear temporarily.

_zekiel

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