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

  • OfficerBribe@lemm.ee
    111·
    18 hours ago

    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.

    • sandwichsaregood@lemmy.world
      6·
      8 hours ago

      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.

      • Derp@lemmy.ml
        41·
        4 hours ago

        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).

      • Derp@lemmy.ml
        3·
        4 hours ago

        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.

      • tooclose104@lemmy.ca
        13·
        13 hours ago

        It doesn’t bother me one bit of you know my search history. You’ll learn I search a word to see if I know your to spell it properly and that I DIY a lot of stuff lol