I’ve no idea how I overlooked Mojeek. I’m always on the lookout for privacy oriented alternatives. Seems they exist since 2004 and don’t have any controversies surrounding them.
UK-based
no-tracking privacy policy
independent search index
first search engine to implement a no-tracking policy in 2006
operates its own web crawler
infrastructure in a green data center in the UK
business model based on advertising, API’s and partnerships
I haven’t used Mojeek, so I can’t speak to that, but the UK has some of the worst privacy protections and mass-surveillance anywhere. They’re also part of the Five Eyes, so I wouldn’t count the fact that they’re UK-based as a point in their favor.
Is it something you have to trust they comply with what they say?
Nice that it has its own indexes, but according to this comparison its proprietary SW, running on UK servers without tor interface, and being backed or debated at least by UK politicians. We’re not talking about a not for profit organization either, and they do have individualized answers as well, so they have the mechanisms to individualize results to queries, meaning they keep information about your queries. So in the end, it boils down to the user trusting its service it seems.
Yes, meta search engines do not provide their own indexes, but searxNG is at least open source, you can select the search engines to use, included mojeek, and they serve as a front end preventing the underneath engine to track you (whether it’s against their public policy or not) as if you were to use such engine directly.
I’ve no idea how I overlooked Mojeek. I’m always on the lookout for privacy oriented alternatives. Seems they exist since 2004 and don’t have any controversies surrounding them.
I haven’t used Mojeek, so I can’t speak to that, but the UK has some of the worst privacy protections and mass-surveillance anywhere. They’re also part of the Five Eyes, so I wouldn’t count the fact that they’re UK-based as a point in their favor.
Agreed. These weren’t meant to be pros or cons, but facts that I dug up in a quick search. Let everyone interpret for themselves. 😉
Is it something you have to trust they comply with what they say?
Nice that it has its own indexes, but according to this comparison its proprietary SW, running on UK servers without tor interface, and being backed or debated at least by UK politicians. We’re not talking about a not for profit organization either, and they do have individualized answers as well, so they have the mechanisms to individualize results to queries, meaning they keep information about your queries. So in the end, it boils down to the user trusting its service it seems.
Yes, meta search engines do not provide their own indexes, but searxNG is at least open source, you can select the search engines to use, included mojeek, and they serve as a front end preventing the underneath engine to track you (whether it’s against their public policy or not) as if you were to use such engine directly.