this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024

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Privacy

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if you looking for a good alternative for google search, try "SearXNG" (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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actually awesome and fast search engine (depending on which instance you use) with no trashy AI and ADs results also great for privacy, if you don't know which instance to use go to https://searx.space/ and choose an instance closest to you

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Aren't all search queries available to whoever hosts an instance? In my eyes this is much worse to privacy and a much bigger risk unless you really know who is behind your chosen instance. I would trust some a company a bit more with safeguarding this information so it does not leak to some random guy.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've always gotten the impression it was mostly intended to be self hosted. I've self hosted it for something like a couple years now, runs like a clock. It still strips out tracking and advertising, even if you don't get the crowd anonymity of a public instance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Self hosting doesn’t make sense as a privacy feature because then it’s still just you making requests to google/other SE

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It's not useless, it removes a lot of the tracking cookies and such and sponsored links loaded with telemetry. Theoretically you can also get the benefits of anonymity if you proxy through Tor or a VPN, which I originally tried to do but turns out Google at least blocks requests from Tor and at least the VPN endpoint I have and probably most of them. Google or whatever upstream SE can still track you by IP when you self host, but its tracking is going to much less without the extra telemetry cookies and tracking code it gets when you use Google results directly.

But yes, practically you either have to trust the instance you're using to some extent or give up some of the anonymity. I opted to self host and would recommend the same over using a public instance if you can, personally. And if privacy is your biggest concern, only use upstream search providers that are (or rather, claim to be) more privacy respecting like DDG or Qwant. My main use case is primarily as a better frontend to search without junk sponsored results and privacy is more of a secondary benefit.

FWIW, they have a pretty detailed discussion on why they recommend self-hosting here.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (5 children)

As someone who hosts an instance, news to me lol

Edit: Developer says this can't be done currently? Reddit comment

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Of course it can be done, check your web server logs.

If you are using GET requests to send search queries to searxng, what you searched for will show up in the logs as

2024-10-31 123.321.0.100 /?query=kinky+furry+pictures

If you use POST requests the server admin can also easily enable logging those.

People hosting searxng can absolutely see what you searched for, along with your IP address, user agent string etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Well my instance’s logs are sent to null for this reason already, but thank you for the info!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Thanks for clarification and great that this is not included in project, but couldn't someone change the server side code and somehow see more info that goes through?

I know there is that HTML check in https://searx.space/ to see if search interface code is not heavily modified, but on server side anything could go on.

If requests are encrypted in a way that searxng does not see contents then it probably is not trivial to do, but there always is a possibility something clever could be done.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Companies are definitely selling your data. Use a VPN.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

A VPN will not save you, they are easily worse for privacy in terms of user tracking. It centralises your entire web traffic in a single place for the VPN provider to track (and potentially sell).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You either trust the ISP or a VPN. Its a tool not a blanket of protection. Opsec and knowing how to move is most important.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

But you pay more for what is essentially the same with a VPN. You have to buy a VPN subscription on top of your internet subscription, get less speed because your internet traffic is being routed through a different country and get no benefit to privacy. The only use case for a VPN is when you have to bypass georestrictions.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

it's like using google from 2000's; thanks for sharing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

If you set it as your default search in chrome or such, it will convert the Google search bar in Android to a SearXNG search bar. I started using it a little while back. Firefox never did well for me on Android (I'm sure it's anecdotal)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I stopped using it not because of the results but because you couldn't swipe back without it sending you to the base website.

On DuckDuckGo (and google n others) a search is shown in the URL like looking for frog:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=frog&t=fpas&ia=web

However in SearXNG it just shows
https://searxng.world/search
Which I don't have an issue with, however when you click on a link and then go back to the search results it would have no idea what you searched for as it's not in the URL and show an error.

That aside, the UI is great. icons don't swap around on you like Google or have annoying popups about 'privacy' like DDG. On the topic of search results, it was good enough for me. Not great but then again there aren't any good search engines right now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I really wish there was a privacy oriented search engine with decent search results ...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

At this point, I just wish there was a search engine with decent results ...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I've been pretty happy with Kagi and they have a decent privacy policy: https://kagi.com/privacy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Whoogle is a good option for self hosting as well

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Can someone explain the meaning of the name and the people building this project please?

You're trusting how information is filtered and funneled to you with a search tool, but a change to take lightly. Google sucks, but they have a lot to lose, a lot of eyes on them and I know generally their base motivations.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Fortunately, you can read through the source code of SearxNG and even modify it - provided that you also publish the modified version to your users if you host it publicly.

You can run your own instance, public or private. Or you can use a public instance.

Internally, it uses other search engines, rather than crawling the entire web and indexing everything.

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