this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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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 1 week ago (14 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] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

As someone who hosts an instance, news to me lol

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 1 week ago

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

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