Mmh, looks like you need an account to use this search engine. Always not a good sign in terms of privacy but I might be wrong here. I'm currently using Presearch. It's decentralized (like Lemmy) and anonymizes your search queries. Most of it is Open Source but they announced to make everything Open Source in the future.
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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Privacy
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I'm immediately turned off of PreSearch by the Crypto association.
Why? You can completely ignore that. Just use the search engine and ignore the rest. I'm really happy with the search results.
Well, because I tend to find crypto full of scams, and I think search engine that both blasts crypto in your face and is apparently based on it is likely to be built on a shaky foundation. I think decentralized search is likely to be slower, and very slow if based on waiting for crypto processing to happen.
To me, this is like walking up to a car wash that's proudly saying "run by Madoff". It doesn't matter how good the car wash itself is, I am concerned about it's long term viability and judgement vs getting funding from almost any other source.
Distributed is also very likely less private because you have to send the data to multiple places, or you have the issue of waiting for consistency across front ends. If it doesn't have multiple servers, then it's the backend that has to be distributed right?
Look, it might be a fine search, but if you doubt Kagi for needing an account, I would doubt this for the crypto association.
It's fine but I wouldn't judge if I had never tested it for a while. But whether you wanna give that search engine a chance or not is completely up to you ofc. :)
If you wanna know how it respects its user's privacy you need to do some research as it's a little complex. I don't see where you get scammed just by using the search engine. It's like you're saying you got scammed by a car seller once so you'll never make any other attempt to buy a car ever again.
In the meantime I got to understand why Kagi needs an account: It's their business model. You have to pay to make searches that exceed the free 100 searches. So of course you need an account.
It's more that I got scammed once buying a car at the side of the road not realizeing it was fly by night, so now I won't buy cars except from established dealers. Idk I saw the part where they said buy some new crypto coin, and then the bit where it works because someone is buying this coin so they can pay some people running the search. YMMV, I just pass on anything that talks about crypto at this point.
I'll look for presearch
That is because of their business model, you are the customer.
You don’t HAVE to use a real email either. vlad even says so. But it’s needed to collect payment. Otherwise they don’t track you searches, or even see them. The fees are for their operations and development.
How exactly am I the customer if they don't track me? Do they display ads? How do they cover the costs for this search engine?
You are paying them for the service and the costs to make a custom search engine. The only thing they keep track of is the number of times you queried the service. They don’t track queries or even see them. You don’t have a search history and can’t see previous searches because it’s not tracked
There are no ads. They aren’t just proxying your search like DuckDuckGo.
I see! Thanks for the clarification. I just checked their prices. Looks like you get X searches for a specific price. Not appealing to me but I bet many people are fine with that. I rather prefer a little bit of ads at the top of my search results (which I could block with an adblocker anytime) but that is just my personal preference.
Correct. You can go lower and pay per search as well. And set a warning and hard stop limit.
I do a LOT of searching for work. So the 1000/month is plenty and use it on all devices.
They have features others don’t as well. Such as blocking certain domains from returning results. For example I filter out answers.Microsoft.com because that’s their question boards and it’s rare that anything useful is said there etc.
They also support custom bangs similar to ddg.
I find that I get better results for my job and faster with Kagi. So it’s worth the cost for me.
I'm not really understanding what you wanna tell me with "you are the customer". They display ads at the top of your search results and that's how they make money. Considering that, yes, you are the customer. But they don't track you and your search queries are anonymized so they respect your privacy. With an adblocker you don't even see the ads. You can make an account to earn PRE (the crypto currency they use) with your search queries. But you don't need to do that. You could even run your own node server(s) and earn even more because you're helping the search engine by being a part of the infrastructure. But you can ignore all that and just use the search engine.
Anyway I'm really satisfied with the search results. Didn't even feel the need to switch to another search engine since I've started using it a few months ago.
They display ads at the top of your search results and that’s how they make money.
Kagi does not do that. In fact their search results give you statistics on links/returns about things like trackers etc. there aren’t ads in Kaji returns.
I discovered it some days ago too! It seems very interesting, but I don't feel like it worth a subscription ATM to mee (I'm using Brave search and it's a fine compromise). Saved the link though.
I'm using the free version of 100 search. Tbt, it's quick...but again, 5 dollars to me, here in Argentina is something I can maybe afford
They also offer their own browser: https://browser.kagi.com/
It’s MacOS only. But is nice
I’ve been using it on iPad and iPhone.
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id1484498200?l=en
Ah. Missed those. But I’m pretty sure it’s not available for windows, Linux or android
Testing it right now and damn the results are quite impressive. But I have the same question as you, is it a good idea to use it?
Indeed, it's good on speed and results
I would avoid it only for illegal searches. So I wouldn't say search for torrents with it. Anything else is at least as private as asking a Librarian for help finding info IMO.
I've been using it for a while, and I think as @ProfessorYakkington said, it depends on what you're using it for. I use it for work, and have work pay for it. In this case, I don't need absolute privacy, I need a contractual data guarantee, and their public TOS is (more than) sufficient for what I need for basic search.
It's hard to imagine a functional business relationship in most realms where the company you're doing business with has 0 knowledge of who you are, especially on the Internet. To provide search results kind of requires "knowing", at least for a second, what you're searching for. I think Kagi has a more private model for tailoring the results than traditional search. Instead of hidden filter bubbles, Kagi has transparent "lenses" you can choose to apply or not. The most useful one to me is the "forums" one, which refocuses on actual forums for results, like technet, askubuntu etc...
Not having to fight off ads, and having a pretty obvious method for them to make money(i.e. you pay them for service) is all to the good IMHO. The results seem to be on par with StartPage, with one difference. The forums lens is better at finding "real answers" for tech questions than StartPage which often finds the same "SPAM" results Google does. This is unsurprising as StartPage is anonymized Google. This may or may not be a good thing. If you're OK with ads or ad-blocking(you should be) - why pay for Kagi when you can use StartPage for free? The main reasons are to support a different search model, to get the lenses -especially forum focused, and for their GPT like results with citations.
I use kagi. I think it depends on your level of concern , as it does with most things. Kagi has a pretty nicely written privacy policy. They do require an account but I signed up with a masked email and cc. For my use I find their privacy policy enough given the other measures I take but the main reason I like kagi is zero ads or prioritized posting. Experiencing search with out ads is a pretty awesome exp in my opinion. There are other ways to get free search with ads stripped out but this “feel” fundamentally different from a service purpose built to be ad free and private. I am happy to pay for ad free platforms vs using platforms that are trying to do privacy preserving ads but this is more of a personal stance and preference. I know your question was more about privacy than ads but I find the two closely linked. I’ve attached a summary of their privacy policy below:
- Searches are anonymous and private to you. Kagi does not see what you are searching at all.
- We do not log or store your IP address. Your IP address is used only temporarily when enriching location/maps searches, and is not shared with any other party.
- We only store cookies needed for site functionality. We do not use any web browser analytics or other frontend telemetry.
- We do not display any ads, or have any first-party or third-party tracking in service of ads.
- We do not share customer data with third parties, except as needed to perform explicitly accessed services. In those cases, we will share the minimum amount of data needed to provide the service, and will do so in an anonymous way.
- We collect only the data needed to provide and protect the service.
- We proxy all images to prevent tracking from third parties.
- We use HTTPS encryption everywhere. All passwords are hashed and salted.
I tried it but I found the results to be not as good as Google. I was trying to search for "phone loses connection" and one of the results was about losing weight. Google doesn't do that so I thought that was really weird.
Interesting. I search almost for a living. I find results on Kagi to be better. That said my searches are almost always more detailed.
For example I would never type in such a generic search. I would almost always start with the make/model of the phone, type of connection (ie: wifi, Bluetooth, LTE) and go from there at the absolute least.
Been using it for a little over a year, I think. No complaints about the service itself, though its founder, Vlad, is of the opinion that moderation of search results is simultaneously a bad thing that should not be done, and a benefit to users, depending on context. Typical libertarian-brain in that sense.
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