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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Asklemmy
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I self-host searXNG, but you can use one of the public instances as well. My understanding is that it is more secure because you're search results are commingled with whoever else uses the instance, but you also can use something like libredirect to further distribute your search results across various instances for further security
How exactly do you self host your own searxng instance? Also, based on what you said, wouldn't having your own instance make you stand out more?
Having your own instance can be bad for privacy, as all your searches come from your IP (hosted at home) or the same IP (hosted on a server). They might not be traced to you personally, but you might still get personalized results or your search may still be tracked, depending on how they track you.
That's circumvented when using it with some or better many other people. But then, you need to trust the admin of that instance.
Self-hosted is easy if you know a bit about servers. You need a domain pointing to a server. If it's the only thing hosted on that server and you have set up docker on it, you can just follow their instructions here to get it running in less than 5 minutes (assuming you run the default config and don't customize all of the settings for a while): https://github.com/searxng/searxng-docker?tab=readme-ov-file#how-to-use-it
Ah ok gotcha. So it's a trade-off of having the instance always up vs privacy? Interesting. Thanks for the detailed info! I keep meaning to get into self hosting lol
No, it’s not „always up“.
There are three main ways how Google, Bing,… can track you:
With Searxng, they can only do the last variant. But assuming you use a “real” server in the internet (and not one at home), it will likely have the same IP for its lifetime. And if you’re using it alone, that’s the only thing they need to identify you and track your searches. The more other people use your instance, the less useful this kind of tracking gets. Too much noise to identify a single person.
Ah ok that makes more sense, thanks!
Someone already gave an extensive comment about how to set things up so I will skip that part.
Good observation re: self hosting potentially reducing privacy. The way that I keep my privacy during self-hosting is to completely avoid search engines that track my IP address, and then, ideally, although the remaining search engines are less efficient than the likes of Google or Bing, the fact that the results are aggregated hopefully increase the efficiency of the results.
For my default searches, it uses mwmbl, mojeek & qwant
Oh ok gotcha! Thanks, that makes sense!