I don’t think a blog named “iOSLife” belongs here. Apple is one of the worst offenders in terms of privacy violations.
Exactly, when you see these type of articles from random websites you have never heard of and who’s names have nothing to do with subject recommending paid products beware.
Its just a poorly ai written native ad for a paid search engine posted by a marketing agency.
Also the domain is on malicious block lists so better not to click on it.
Looking at your post & comment history it becomes blatantly clear that you’re the poorly written AI spreading propaganda here…
Hi, once again just gonna ask for help identifying where my site is on a blocked list. If you can’t, then I would appreciate you stopping from saying that. Thanks! :)
Another user in a post below has already cited one of the blocklists this domain is on!
How did you reply to the comment? You said you did a search, on the product you are promoting (LMAO), and couldn’t find it!
Your agenda is pretty clear, you are using every opportunity to create awareness of this company by calling out its name and promote its products.
This whole thread is one giant ad for a paid search company that gives user data to notorious telemetry data brokers, this is a privacy community so this post should be removed.
The user mentioned a blocklist, but I’m not able to find that list either. If we are going to accuse someone of maliciously pushing an agenda, I’d like a little more proof before jumping on the bandwagon.
I also searched it on Google and DDG and didn’t find it on the blocklist.
At this point I can only assume you are trolling by saying the same thing over and over again. I’ve made it very clear I am not promoting anything, rather just looking for opinions on the best options.
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Yes, they did but my domain isn’t on that list from what I can tell. I’d love to know the list you found it on.
I think the article appears biased because searxng appears to offer the same functionality as Kagi, in spite of being free, yet Kagi is shown to be the best in class for some reason? Also it doesn’t touch on the critique that kagi having a login potentially aggregates all of your searches into one account that is stored by one company.
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Kagi’s privacy policy claims that “Searches are anonymous and private to you. Kagi does not log and associate searches with an account.”
SearXNG is tricky because the privacy policy comes from whatever instance you are using.
Anecdotally, I have had better results from Kagi than SearXNG. The SearXNG instance I have been testing out keeps getting rate limited and mostly shows results from Qwant and Bing.
I don’t really have a bias as I am testing out all of these options and trying to find the one that works best for my family.
Kagi can claim whatever they want in their privacy policy. Where’s the code of their servers? Because I see none. How do we know they aren’t keeping logs that could be easily correlated (by themselves or a third party who access their servers)?
Even if we had the code, I would still be skeptical, we can’t be sure what code are they exactly running on the server side and having an account linked to every search is just awful.
SearXNG is anonymous while offering the very same features, if not better.
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You aren’t wrong about not knowing if SearXNG instances are running a modified version of SearXNG that tries to log you.
Fortunately, we don’t need to trust those instances. They do not require you to login, so there’s not an unique identifier (like an account) to associate your searches with other than your IP address which you can hide with a VPN, or even better, using a .onion instance (something that Kagi does not have at all AFAIK).
For using Kagi, no matter if you switch your IP address every time, if you delete cookies after closing your browser or if you buy a new laptop for every search query, you’re uniquely identified because you need to log into your account.
And for that account, you have to use a payment method. Sure, you can try and pay with a Monero to Bitcoin exchanger and do not give any personal information (and if we’re being realistic, we know most Kagi clients aren’t doing this). Even if you paid anonymously, you can only achieve pseudonymity because you’re associated with your account.
With SearXNG, I could use a different .onion instance for each query and be completely anonymous (that’s completely overkill, but it illustrates my point well).
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No. Kagi’s fault is needing an account, a unique identifier which all searches could be correlated to.
SearXNG could leak your IP if your VPN provider was keeping logs? Definitely. And so does Kagi. Tor could be attacked by a three letter agency and compromise your .onion connection to SearXNG? Definitely. And it would be easier to de-anonimyze you when connecting to Kagi, which doesn’t have an onion domain. Do you need to give SearXNG your email and/or payment information? Not at all. But Kagi requires it. Can you look like two completely different users when doing two queries to SearXNG? Easy. Not possible with Kagi. Do we have the server’s code? We do for SearXNG instances. We don’t have Kagi’s.
I think it’s pretty clear the privacy compromise here.
That’s a good point that I hadn’t considered. I do like the idea of SearXNG, but didn’t have great results when testing it. Maybe I should give it another shot on another instance.
You take the opportunity in every comments to promote this paid search product yet you keep maintaining that this is a genuinely unbiased article.
Friend, I am just responding to your false claims with information from the privacy policy so that other users can be informed with what is clearly stated
What you are doing is disingenuous. You are maintaining that that you posted an unbiased article that clearly promotes a company’s paid search product.
In each comment, you further go on to include more information about this company and its products. You don’t mention the other search products from the article other than to say they are not as good as the product you are promoting.
This is a privacy community not ad space.
If you notice, I am only including more information when someone (mostly you) has brought up concerns about one of the offerings. If you had brought up concerns around Whoogle, then this conversation would be about Whoogle instead of Kagi. I am not promoting anything and my post clearly says,
Which one should I choose? That’s up to you and what your threat model is. Each one of the products I listed have pros and cons. They all have different and unique feature sets. They all pull from different search indexes. You should choose the one that provides the best results and amount of privacy you desire.
I’d love to have more discussion around the other offerings in my post and even ones not listed.
I don’t think you know what the word bias means if you think it is impossible for an unbiased review to come to a conclusion that favors a paid product.
Kagi user myself. Great experience, worth the $10.
Side note: Your posts feels a bit like self-promotion 🫥
Yeah, Kagi seems pretty cool so far.
Not trying to self-promote, just looking for feedback on my findings and to see if anyone has other opinions to share around the products
I paid for the $5 subscription with Monero and used an alias email at signup. I like it so far
that’s still only pseudonymity. with SearXNG or even with Duckduckgo, I can just open a new window of my browser with a different IP and be a completely different person. Hell, I can even use a different SearXNG instance and my search query won’t even go through the same server than before. With Kagi, that’s impossible. You must always be logged in your account. Every search you do, could be potentially linked to your account.
I don’t see how it’s self-promotion if there’s no profit to be made. In my book, it’s no different than someone making a text post here.
I think all of the “drama” in this thread could’ve been solved with me copy and pasting my words into a self post
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People aren’t allowed to post their own stuff now? That’s been the norm since forever.
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Who do you ask permission from and how? Message the mods? Post a poll?
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When does “forever” start?
If nobody was allowed to post their own stuff, then things like official comic accounts wouldn’t exist. Or official accounts in general.
We wouldn’t want official accounts of any corporation in this community.
That seems unwise.
It would be better to have some known corporate accounts, than only unknown corporate accounts.
Before the internet even existed. You are aware that forums have existed before anyone made an account on Lemmy, right?
The etiquette of other forums don’t define the etiquette here. You’re aware that the entire internet doesn’t exist in a monoculture, right?
Oh. Sure. I truthfully was just looking for some feedback on my findings and didn’t see any rules against posting articles written by self.
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No worries. I appreciate you letting it stay up.
I appreciate that you included sections of the relevant privacy policies. I like your approach.
Please run what you write through spell check. You misspelled: extremely, business, advertisers, educated, and default. The word October could be capitalized, but as part of a hypothetical search query, it could be lower case on purpose.
Lastly, Qwant is struck through in your last sentence. It’s unclear if you chose that formatting because you don’t recommend it (as stated earlier) or for some other reason.
Keep writing! We need more of this!
Oh yikes. Those are egregious spelling errors hahaha. Thank you for reading and the feedback!
Yes, I struckthrough Qwant since they are sending your IP to Microsoft with every search. :)
It might be worth throwing in something at the bottom of the page explaining why you struck it through.
Done. Thanks for the recommendation.
This is not a genuine article it is a bot written propaganda piece, full of spelling errors and covertly advertising a product.
It states that Kaji is the best when actually they are clearly the worst, they do record your IP to deliver their services and they do share your data with a notorious 3rd party tracking company- sentry.io.
If you pay them then everything you do on their site is linked directly do you. I.e. zero privacy.
These “articles” from unknown websites such as ioslife are clearly native ads, this one for Kaji.
There is a reason why the other user noticed this website is on malicious blocklists.
Kajis marketing agency has a lot of bots on this platform so it will get upvotes and “users” will chime in with comments on how much they agree with the “article” and provide customer testimonials about how they are also satisfied paying customers but this post is fooling nobody.
Its thinly veiled ad copy, a classic native ad with an ai content generated twist.
I didn’t even read OP’s post but…
You state that Kaji is the best when actually they are clearly the worst
It’s Kagi not Kaji. If you’re going to criticize something at least get the name right.
If you pay them then everything you do on their site is linked directly do you.
Privacy is not anonymity… and it’s a pev of mine that people confuse this.
However, you can get pretty close to anonymity paying them in crypto:
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/payment-methods.html
These “articles” from unknown websites su h ad ioslife are clearly a native ads, this one for Kaji. Kaijis marketing agency has a lot of bots on this platform so it will get upvotes and but you are fooling nobody.
👎
Clearly you didn’t read my post either. The post is criticizing the “article” posted on a domain (that is on malicious domain bloocklist), not the company that the article is advertising.
If I got the name of the product wrong clearly my post is not motivated by pushing brand and product recognition, I am instead commenting on the clear biased attempt to manipulate.
Your post on the other hand takes the opportunity to share additional unsolicited information about this company’s products. Now we are all more informed on this company’s payment methods, well done, very organic post indeed.
This is a privacy community not a commercial.
Hey could you point me to the blocklist that my domain is currently on? I am not able to find it on any public list. It also would be extremeley surprising to me if it was on a list as this is the first article I have shared with the world.
If it’s a bot then why the spelling errors? Not understanding the logic here.
Ever see spelling errors in spam? They do that on purpose.
Right in email they’re trying to get around spam filters. This is a blog, aka a website. Somewhere in this thread (curse Lemmy clients) someone pointed out the misspelled words and they were rather basic.
As a web developer familiar with SEO: still not making the connection. And from what I’m seeing lately in the comments here and elsewhere Lemmy seems to be full of people just jumping to conclusions rather quickly.
Your response really doesn’t answer anything. Spammers and/or bots misspell words in emails. Okay? And that’s related how?
Bot output can have spelling errors. Example given. Simple as that.
You’re claiming that it’s written by a bot simply due to spelling errors. I don’t believe you so I’m legitimately asking what the motivation would be, and you just say “well they misspell.”
Guess who else misspells things? Have you read any recently news publication? They’re just full of spelling and grammar mistakes. Look at me — I can misspell thigns too, I must be a bot.
Yeah that’s not really an answer, and the reason I’d like you to actually think about it is because I believe you’re confused what the difference is between a “bot” and a simple text generator.
If it’s a bot then why the spelling errors?
I simply answered that. Bot output can have spelling errors. Nothing more was said or implied.
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They pass your data to sentry, a notorious telemetry company. Go read their privacy policy if you want a scare.
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Sentry is a well known and notorious user tracking telemetry company. Any company that is passing along any data “anonymous” or otherwise to these bad actors has no business being discussed here. This is a privacy community. You can go read about what sentry does on Exodus privacy.
Well known by whom? Notorious in what way? A bad actor in what way? You’re pulling words and judgments out of your ass. And no, you can’t read about what sentry.io does on Exodus Privacy, because the site is not listed there. Oops.
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Its interesting to see that sentry is not on the exodus website. I emailed them once when another tracking analytics product was not listed on the website and they said it was an omission and added it. I believe the list is not automated.
On the other hand, exodus has a OSS app on fdroid called classyshark. When you point it to an app, it scans the source of every Java class and reports exactly which methods contain tracking code. You can even read the methods themselves and see exactly what data is being collected and sent. Note: this is true, real time source evidence and far superior to any company’s “trust us bro” privacy policy.
I use FOSS only software on my devices and do not install apps with 3rd party tracking, telemetry and analytics but if I recall correctly, if you run the exodus tool against some of the Mozilla based browsers like Fennec or Mull I believe that you can see the sentry code in action there. Sentry is a popular analytics company, they collect and aggregate telemetry data, that is what they do. There can be little privacy expectations when apps on your phone or websites you visit are collecting and sending your generated data to 3rd party companies. Almost all of these companies also share this data with their 3rd party “business partners”. So once the data is out of your control, it is virtually destined to end up aggregated with data brokers. Sentry is popular so it will be in a lot of other apps as well but I didn’t see any on my device.
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“I believe”, “If I recall correctly”, “I believe” … Yeah, but you’re wrong. Wrong about this and wrong about everything else. You don’t even understand what sentry.io does, and what kind of information they receive from their customers.
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TIL I am a bot. :)
I also made it a point not to state anything is the best or the worst and mentioned that the choice is up to you and your threat model.
Also, thanks to @digger@lemmy.ca for pointing out my typos. I have fixed them now.
I didn’t say you were a bot I said the article was written by a bot.
You likely wrote something like this:
Openai: write a short article comparing 3 search engines cite a short paragraph from each engines privacy policy but conclude that Kaji is the most secure in the last paragraph and recommend it. It should be suitable for posting on social media.
You do seem like a marketing agency however as you keep promoting the details of this paid search product in each post reply.
Well now, that would’ve saved me a lot of time and research. I also wouldn’t have learned nearly as much from reading all the different privacy policies. Luckily, I didn’t do that which allowed me to create my own personal recommendations for my family and myself.
I want to reiterate that I have no affiliation with Kagi or any other search engine, I currently don’t even pay for Kagi. I am just a human on the hunt for the best search engine to protect my family’s privacy.
That said, I just saw your update regarding Sentry.
Looking at Kagi’s Privacy Policy, there are two things to say in response to
It states that Kaji is the best when actually they are clearly the worst, they do record your IP to deliver their services and they do share your data with a notorious 3rd party tracking company- sentry.io.
“We do not log or store your IP address. Your IP address is used only temporarily when enriching location/maps searches, and is not shared with any other party.”
“Anonymous logs are shared with Sentry when bugs, crashes, or warnings occur for debugging purposes.”
Also:
If you pay them then everything you do on their site is linked directly do you. I.e. zero privacy.
“Searches are anonymous and private to you. Kagi does not log and associate searches with an account.”
FYI that site is on the cbuijs list of malicious domains
ETA : improving(.) Duckduckgo (.) Com
You’re saying ioslife.dev is on a list? I did a quick search on Kagi and didn’t find anything. Could you share more info about what you’re talking about? Thanks!
The list is called ‘cbuijs Malicious Domains’ according to my firewall logs.
You might want to ask them to take you off the list.
Do you have a screenshot you could share with me? I am searching “ioslife” on the GitHub page and not getting any results.
This is from RethinkDNS
Thank you! Is that setup via uBlock?
That’s RethinkDNS, their cloud based, but it looks the same for their on device.
Because this is a poorly bot written native ad, its a propaganda piece posted on a website that is on malicious blocklists.
This is clearly biased. Your points against SearXNG are weak. And you purposefully ignore the huge privacy implications of needing an account to do searches.
I don’t think this is written by a bot, but I’d say it’s either a camouflaged ad or a rather biased article.
Edit: To be clear. I do not care that a certain company has a good privacy policy. I want verifiable facts, not unverifiable claims. Their backend is proprietary, while SearXNG is free software. There’s only one entity behind that company, which could be (or turn) malicious at any moment. Meanwhile, SearXNG is hosted by multiple individuals and organizations, you could even use a different instance each time, so it’s impossible to corelate your search queries.
So yeah, this is a rather biased article towards a certain company.
Thanks for your feedback. My goal was just to look through the privacy policies with this, but you bring up a good point that that might not be a good experiment and could less to false assumptions. I do wonder if Kagi has had any this party analysis to back up their claims since it is not OSS.
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