5 ms·

Disagree. When the FBI comes to them asking for a list of everyone who's done a search for "pipe bomb", your anonymity would have been welcome.

dharmab 5y ago
Kagi doesn't log much identifying information, so the government would have to compel them to change their system with a national security letter LavaBit style. https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy
freediver 5y ago
While there is certainly possibility of FBI asking for this, I am afraid we couldn't respond to such request. Reason is simply we do not log or associate searches with an account. Our business model is selling subscriptions, not data. (Kagi Founder here)
- kelnos 5y ago
  I've been using Kagi for the past couple months (and love it so far!), but whenever I open a private browsing window, I revert back to DDG. Even though you say you don't associate search queries with accounts, it's hard for me to get over the "mental hump" to truly feel that in my bones and feel comfortable entering a "private" query while being signed in. I know it's not entirely rational. I mean, maybe it is a little bit rational: I only have your word (some random person that I don't know) that you don't -- and, critically, will never -- log queries associated with account. But regardless, it's hard to feel private when I'm entering something into a form on a website where I'm signed in as myself.
  - freediver 5y ago
    Thank you! Your concern is shared by many users and realistically speaking there is not much we can do, but hope to survive long enough to build trust. It is somewhat ironic that the only business model that has hope of not being interested in private information, does require an account. While there is nothing inherently bad with accounts, all the other services we are competing with, that have been exploiting user data for years also made accounts have bad reputation. User choice at this moment is really - use a free service that you know is doing absolutely everything it can to track your behavior (directly or indirectly contributing to ad-tech, even without you logging in), or use a paid service that aligns the incentives with the user (also requiring a leap of faith because other services before it burned the trust bridge). I hope enough users will make that leap of faith with Kagi.
    - richardsocher 5y ago
      At you.com we believe in user choice - private mode where we track nothing and personalized mode in an account where you can select your preferred sources like Reddit or Quora, StackOverflow, etc. For now private mode has no ads, but sadly, it might only be monetizable with private ads in the future, similar to DDG..
      - jjulius 5y ago
        Hey Richard, it's been pointed out a bunch of times to you on HN over four months that "private mode" is a misnomer; people have pointed out that there are still outgoing requests to third-parties in private mode, who can do whatever they want with the data they get. DDG's private mode lacks these third-party requests. I really like seeing more competition entering the search space and competing against Google, but it's a huge bummer when someone continually touts their "private" product while routinely ignoring comments asking for clarification around something that suggests it's not actually private. Can you please shed some light on this?
    - throwaway684936 5y ago
      I think a big concern is some government agency basically saying "you have to start logging, and you better do it quietly." I'd suggest a warrant canary. It's better than nothing.
      - freediver 5y ago
        Our system is not designed with this tying accounts and searches in mind. Doing that change would require a major refactor and probably month or more of work, stopping everything else. I just do not see that happening.
        throwaway684936 5y ago
        That's reassuring to know.

dharmab 5y ago

Kagi doesn't log much identifying information, so the government would have to compel them to change their system with a national security letter LavaBit style. https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy

freediver 5y ago

While there is certainly possibility of FBI asking for this, I am afraid we couldn't respond to such request. Reason is simply we do not log or associate searches with an account. Our business model is selling subscriptions, not data. (Kagi Founder here)

kelnos 5y ago
I've been using Kagi for the past couple months (and love it so far!), but whenever I open a private browsing window, I revert back to DDG. Even though you say you don't associate search queries with accounts, it's hard for me to get over the "mental hump" to truly feel that in my bones and feel comfortable entering a "private" query while being signed in. I know it's not entirely rational. I mean, maybe it is a little bit rational: I only have your word (some random person that I don't know) that you don't -- and, critically, will never -- log queries associated with account. But regardless, it's hard to feel private when I'm entering something into a form on a website where I'm signed in as myself.
- freediver 5y ago
  Thank you! Your concern is shared by many users and realistically speaking there is not much we can do, but hope to survive long enough to build trust. It is somewhat ironic that the only business model that has hope of not being interested in private information, does require an account. While there is nothing inherently bad with accounts, all the other services we are competing with, that have been exploiting user data for years also made accounts have bad reputation. User choice at this moment is really - use a free service that you know is doing absolutely everything it can to track your behavior (directly or indirectly contributing to ad-tech, even without you logging in), or use a paid service that aligns the incentives with the user (also requiring a leap of faith because other services before it burned the trust bridge). I hope enough users will make that leap of faith with Kagi.
  - richardsocher 5y ago
    At you.com we believe in user choice - private mode where we track nothing and personalized mode in an account where you can select your preferred sources like Reddit or Quora, StackOverflow, etc. For now private mode has no ads, but sadly, it might only be monetizable with private ads in the future, similar to DDG..
    - jjulius 5y ago
      Hey Richard, it's been pointed out a bunch of times to you on HN over four months that "private mode" is a misnomer; people have pointed out that there are still outgoing requests to third-parties in private mode, who can do whatever they want with the data they get. DDG's private mode lacks these third-party requests. I really like seeing more competition entering the search space and competing against Google, but it's a huge bummer when someone continually touts their "private" product while routinely ignoring comments asking for clarification around something that suggests it's not actually private. Can you please shed some light on this?
  - throwaway684936 5y ago
    I think a big concern is some government agency basically saying "you have to start logging, and you better do it quietly." I'd suggest a warrant canary. It's better than nothing.
    - freediver 5y ago
      Our system is not designed with this tying accounts and searches in mind. Doing that change would require a major refactor and probably month or more of work, stopping everything else. I just do not see that happening.
      - throwaway684936 5y ago
        That's reassuring to know.