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.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Kagi is the best search engine on the web right now.
They charge for it because they need to get money some other way then selling your data. But it's well worth it.
We have to stop expecting things to be free. They can't be free if you want privacy and quality and no ads.
I've seen it mentioned and you're quite right about expecting to get quality, privacy, and free. It's always a pick two.
But can you explain why Kagi is so good?
Also a Kagi user here. First thing you'll notice compared to other search engines is no ads at the top.
Comparing between multiple search engines, Kagi consistently delivers relevant results for world wide content, but also for more local searches.
You can further refine your search by up/down ranking sites for yourself or even create customized lenses that search specific (types of) sites if you know where you might find the answer. There are multiple predefined lenses, for example searching only .edu domains, forums or programming language websites.
I could but you should just try it and see what you think. You can search 100 times for free to check it out.
If you find what you are looking for and even getting new good results you never saw on Google, that's a very good rating. :)
kagi is great, ddg is also improving
Startpage.com
Man that website was so useful, thank you for linking it
You can use Farside with a Whoogle instance.
That way you don't have to rely on a single instance.
TIL about farside, it looks very useful
How can I set this up on cromite?
I've added farside.link searx instance "main link" (https://farside.link/searx) to "homepage" but it gives me the same searx instance everytime
What are the controversies with DuckDuckGo? I’ve never heard of anything.
Their browser is sharing data with MS, since they're using their services instead of Google. They've been upfront about it and explained there is no way around it.
As long as you just use their search engine, you're fine.
In addition to the Microsoft trackers, I referenced this as well in another reply in this topic:
https://reclaimthenet.org/duckduckgo-down-ranking-russian-disinformation
There are plenty of other sources that also reported on this.
Maybe you should give Qwant a try
Qwant just shows Bing results, like most alternative search engines.
Between the ones I tried startpage, DDG, and Brave the 1st one gives me the best results, all of them are privacy respecting
Startpage.com Other i use are listed on privacytools.io
Do you have the ability to run your own Whoogle instance?
Mullvad Leta is a good option but it's not convenient because you need to be connected to their VPN
I selfhost SearXNG and route it's traffic through a VPN. I rarely get blocked by search engines, and when I do I just change the VPN server. You lose the benefit of your data being intermixed with everyone elses on a shared instance, but you still get the other privacy improvements from SearXNG
Search (pun) for a SearxNG (read as searching) instance.
It's an open source meta search engine. You can make it even more private if you selfhost it.
OP said they want to stop using SearxNG.
Also, selfhosting it makesist less privacy friendly, if you are hosting it only for yourself, as the search engines your instance is contacting can easily determine that all those searches are coming from a same IP. Sp, even if it is preventing the telemetry collection, a detailed profile can be made on the person hosting it. Butiff multiple people are using it, profiling becomes difficult. Same is the case with using self-hosted VPNs. They are good against censorship and for some other things, but not for privacy.
Oh, thank you for correcting me! It's right there and I didn't see it. My bad.
You raise good points. I confess I hadn't thought about it like that. So, not only you corrected me, you also enlightened me. I'm today's lucky 10000!
