Maybe someone can ELI5 how Kagi works then. Yes, I read all their documentation, but I’m still not convinced on the “100% privacy-respecting”. In our world of proprietary back ends with peepers, cloud backdoors along with home assistants and cars that say “we don’t listen”, but suddenly have evidence when they need it - How can we trust Kagi? They say;
no telemetry, ads, or collection of private information
and
we do not log searches or in any way tie them to an account
But there’s “plans” that count your searches per month, so that is attributed to your account. They can tell if you use a bang, so they do have the ability to see what you search for. They also see if you reload the same search, so it knows exactly what you searched for. They can tell the difference between images and news and whether you’re loading more content, and attribute that to your account.
What I’m hearing is that we’re supposed to trust them when they say “hey guys, we don’t look even though we can/could see everything”? Is that it?
It’s most likely an API linked to your logged in account that counts each search performed and logs it against your account. You don’t need to see a user’s search to track that information.
That sounds reasonable and likely the method. Would you indulge a few more relevant questions? Could that API also know your search term without sharing it? How can we know that the API is not being abused? And, can access to an API like that be shared, or hacked? Are we still at “we don’t look even though we could”?
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !privacyguides@lemmy.one
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We’ve tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the “official” Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other “Privacy Guides” communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
No soliciting engagement: Don’t ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
Don’t repost topics which have already been covered here.
News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don’t abuse our community’s willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Maybe someone can ELI5 how Kagi works then. Yes, I read all their documentation, but I’m still not convinced on the “100% privacy-respecting”. In our world of proprietary back ends with peepers, cloud backdoors along with home assistants and cars that say “we don’t listen”, but suddenly have evidence when they need it - How can we trust Kagi? They say;
and
But there’s “plans” that count your searches per month, so that is attributed to your account. They can tell if you use a bang, so they do have the ability to see what you search for. They also see if you reload the same search, so it knows exactly what you searched for. They can tell the difference between images and news and whether you’re loading more content, and attribute that to your account.
What I’m hearing is that we’re supposed to trust them when they say “hey guys, we don’t look even though we can/could see everything”? Is that it?
It’s most likely an API linked to your logged in account that counts each search performed and logs it against your account. You don’t need to see a user’s search to track that information.
That sounds reasonable and likely the method. Would you indulge a few more relevant questions? Could that API also know your search term without sharing it? How can we know that the API is not being abused? And, can access to an API like that be shared, or hacked? Are we still at “we don’t look even though we could”?