How private is the Presearch search engine? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I've been trying to find a good privacy respecting browser, but I can't really decide on what to use. I don't like the search results with Brave Search. DuckDuckGo shares my information with Microsoft and SearchXNG shows me NSFW images even with strict search on. I really like Presearch, but I'm not really sure what they're about.

EDIT: After tinkering with the settings of my SearXNG instance, it seems to have reduced the amount of NSFW images. I think I will stick with SearXNG for now.

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[-] MITM0@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Did you try PriEco ?

[-] asudox@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 2 days ago

The best is to self host your own SearXNG metasearch engine.

[-] geography082@lemm.ee 2 points 22 hours ago

This

[-] Irelephant@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago

Does that not defeat the point, because then they can see that the searches are coming from your location/internet?

[-] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

You can host if on a vps, use it behind a vpn, or make a whole group of people using it so you don't know from who these requests were

[-] Irelephant@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

The vpn, sure, but if you host it on a vps (and don't make it public) then all of the requests are coming from the vps's ip. This is private, but not anonymous.

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I have started using a public instance because of this.

[-] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 1 points 23 hours ago

The problem is that you can't customize default settings

[-] asudox@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 21 hours ago

and they get rate limited often.

[-] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 1 points 23 hours ago

Even with a VPN I don't know if request are really that anonymous (anonimity is almost impossible to get)

[-] asudox@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago

I host my searxng instance on a hetzner vps so my ip is not leaked anywhere.

[-] stinky@redlemmy.com 1 points 1 day ago

Care to explain how?

[-] asudox@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

The search requests are being made on my behalf on the host (in my case, the hetzner VPS).

[-] RiQuY@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago

But they are always coming from the same IP, so you are still identifiable. If you want increased anonymity you need more people to use your instance to mix the search topics.

[-] asudox@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 day ago

I don't really care about anonymity much. Privacy != Anonymity.

It seems like some people use my searxng instance sometimes. It's not locked after all.

[-] Irelephant@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

That changes things a lot.

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[-] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 day ago

It seemed extremely sketchy to me, most results were from other engines and it was embracing some weird crypto.

[-] cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 2 days ago

What does DDG share with Microsoft?

[-] TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's probably not that big of a deal, but I just don't want anything to do with Microsoft.

[-] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 days ago

So they only share when you click on an ad. I use an adblocker anyway, so effectively they're not sharing anything. Or do I misunderstand?

[-] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 16 points 2 days ago

I think it’s more of a trust issue.

[-] EmbarrassedDrum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

Exactly. It's sorta like all or nothing. If they share this, go figure what else. And maybe you misunderstood or missed some other parts.

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I trust a search engine if I can turn JS off and still get results.

I just use Duckduckgo Lite with Ublock Origin, NoScript, LocalCDN, Libredirect, and Chameleon extensions on hardened Firefox fork.

A self hosted Searxng would also be a good option though.

[-] TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

I like DDG lite a lot, but I need to be able to search for images :c

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You can still use lite and then use bangs. !ddgi myimagesearch will immediately redirect you to ddg images. Duckduckgo has a plethora of useful quick search shortcuts called Bangs. Even if you don't use lite, bangs are worth looking into imho.

[-] TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

Oh cool. I will check it out later =]

[-] Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

You can disable the ads in settings

[-] Ballissle@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 days ago

Have you considered StartPage ?

It returns google results whilst stripping of all google tracking and does not track itself either.

[-] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 2 days ago

There's some concern now that Startpage is majority owned by an ad company. The company says they want the ad revenue rather than the user data, but it's hard to trust that. I used to use it but moved to Searxng.

[-] Ballissle@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

I tried Searxng but it just wasnt giving good results at all. And lacked far too many features of a modern search engine imo.

The thing is you kinda have to trust the word of all companies with how they collect your data and how they monetise themselves. I still think startpage is one of the best alternatives for privacy. Also my adblockers seem to work fine on startpage's ad links so i dont see them.

[-] TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 days ago

Startpage seems like a pretty good alternative. I read their privacy policy and it looks pretty solid.

[-] Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

whoogle is also similar

[-] CashDragon@realbitcoin.cash 6 points 2 days ago

Not sure about the privacy of Presearch but their results are really good. A few times already I was searching for something I know existed out there and only Presearch was able to find it.

[-] Cris16228@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

How can you make SearXNG work without problems? I've tried only one instance (not enough time) but searching for the game "Borderlands 2" (so nothing unknown) it randomly gives me

Sorry!

No results were found. You can try to:

Refresh the page.

Search for another query or select another category (above).

Change the search engine used in the preferences: /preferences

Switch to another instance: https://searx.space/

Default settings

Changing go something else and back to "General" sometimes it work

[-] TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I use these instances: https://search.inetol.net/ https://search.hbubli.cc/ It's working great so far. The only issue im having is that it pulls Chinese results every once in a while.

[-] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago

Then go into your preferences and change that. The settings you want are saved to a cookie on your device, so you can change the settings even if it’s not your instance.

Deselect any Chinese search engines and save.

[-] TheGiantKorean@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

It was doing that for me so often that it became unusable for me.

[-] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

You can just tell it not to search Chinese engines.

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[-] Cris16228@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago

I'll host my own instance, I just wanted to know and see if it was a common issue or not

[-] LambdaRX@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago

You can combine search engine of choice with anonymity provided by TOR browser.

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this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025

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