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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[–] OfficerBribe@lemm.ee 18 points 2 weeks 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.

[–] macgyver@federation.red 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

As someone who hosts an instance, news to me lol

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

[–] Derp@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.

[–] macgyver@federation.red 2 points 2 weeks ago

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

[–] OfficerBribe@lemm.ee 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.

[–] tooclose104@lemmy.ca -1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] TwinTusks@bitforged.space 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Billions of Chinese also aren't bothered that they live under surveillance, but it isn't right.

[–] Shareni@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

Good thing it only happens to the Chinese...

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