JAKARTA, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Indonesia said it has banned

the privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo, citing concerns

that it could be used to access pornography and online gambling

websites which are illegal in the country, the communications

ministry said on Friday.

Indonesia, with the world's biggest Muslim population, has

strict rules that ban the sharing online of content deemed

obscene. Social media platform Reddit ( RDDT ) and video-hosting platform

Vimeo ( VMEO ) are blocked.

Usman Kansong, a communications ministry official, told

Reuters that DuckDuckGo had been blocked "because of the many

complaints made to us about the rampant online gambling and

pornography content in its search results."

Pennsylvania-based and privately owned DuckDuckGo did not

immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal U.S.

business hours.

The ministry did not say how DuckDuckGo differs from other

search engines such as Alphabet's Google but on its

website, DuckDuckGo said it offered several products intended to

"help people protect their online privacy" including the search

engine, which it said has been praised by privacy advocates.

Indonesia has vowed to crack down on online gambling in

recent months and has banned access to several such websites.

Though illegal, government data showed 3 million Indonesians

went online to gamble last year, spending an estimated $20

billion, or about 1.5% of gross domestic product.