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Old March 6th, 2019 #6
J. Rourke
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Join Date: Feb 2019
Posts: 38
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I just use searx.me, a metasearch engine, aggregating the results of other search engines while not storing information about its users. No logs, no ads and no tracking.

Quote:
Searx (/sɜːrks/) is a free metasearch engine, available under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, with the aim of protecting the privacy of its users. To this end, Searx does not share users' IP addresses or search history with the search engines from which it gathers results. Tracking cookies served by the search engines are blocked, preventing user-profiling-based results modification. By default, Searx queries are submitted via HTTP POST, to prevent users' query keywords from appearing in webserver logs. Searx was inspired by the Seeks project, though it does not implement Seeks' peer-to-peer user-sourced results ranking.

Each search result is given as a direct link to the respective site, rather than a tracked redirect link as used by Google. In addition, when available, these direct links are accompanied by "cached" and/or "proxied" links that allow viewing results pages without actually visiting the sites in question. The "cached" links point to saved versions of a page on archive.org, while the "proxied" links allow viewing the current live page via a Searx-based web proxy. In addition to the general search, the engine also features tabs to search within specific domains: files, images, IT, maps, music, news, science, social media, and videos.

Along with the most well-known instance at searx.me, Searx also features dozens of user-run instances at their own URLs. A service called Searxes can be used to search a different random Searx instance with each query.Searx.me is also available as a Tor hidden service. A public API is available.
Quote:
Across all categories, Searx can fetch search results from about 82 different engines. This includes major search engines and site-specific searches like Bing, Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and Yandex. The engines used for each search category can be set via a "preferences" interface, and these settings will be saved in a cookie in the user's browser, rather than on the server side, since for privacy reasons, Searx does not implement a user login model. Other settings such as the search interface language and the search results language (over 20 languages are available) can be set the same way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx

Searx can fetch a plethora of results beyond the reach of any other search engine I've used.

If you ever use Tor Browser, searx also has a Tor hidden service (onion address), increasing privacy even more. You can read more about that on privacytools.io, an excellent site for tips on staying private & safe on the Internet.

Here is an excerpt from searx's "about" page:

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Why use searx?
  • searx may not offer you as personalised results as Google, but it doesn't generate a profile about you
  • searx doesn't care about what you search for, never shares anything with a third party, and it can't be used to compromise you
  • searx is free software, the code is 100% open and you can help to make it better. See more on github
If you do care about privacy, want to be a conscious user, or otherwise believe in digital freedom, make searx your default search engine or run it on your own server
Searx's source code is entirely free and open source (unlike DuckDuckGo and Startpage), free as in free speech, not necessarily free beer. No "terms and conditions" to "abide" to, so no worrying about your requests being compromised by third parties and/or goverment agencies for being an evilracistnaziwhowannakill6millionjews.

It is probably the only search engine that doesn't include ads in the search results and tracking cookies, that I've dealt with on DDG and SP.

Searx does take some getting used to, but in the long run, the privacy benefits are infinitely superior to Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., and in some cases, even DDG and SP. Another good thing, its results are unbiased, which is good for political stuff that other search engines censor. It is certainly the least jewed search engine out there. Be sure to adjust the SafeSearch filter to "Moderate" in the Preferences (at the top-right corner of the page) to filter out any undesirable results that might show up, otherwise it's a near-perfect search engine.

Last edited by J. Rourke; March 7th, 2019 at 12:35 AM.