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I want to use Kagi but the internet has given me such trust issues that creating an account with a service that can log and tie all my search history back to a

I want to use Kagi but the internet has given me such trust issues that creating an account with a service that can log and tie all my search history back to a personal account or credit card is such a high wall for me to mentally overcome but I'm glad Kagi is expanding their offerings. I truly hope they succeed.

contagiousflow 2y ago
Can I ask what search engine you use then?
- BadHumans 2y ago
  Most of them. Duckduckgo, Startpage, Google, Mojeek, a few others. Depends on what I need at the time.
axegon_ 2y ago
[flagged]
- widowlark 2y ago
  citation needed?
- BadHumans 2y ago
  I don't use or trust Kagi but based on what I know about them from my research, this isn't true and sounds like thinly veiled racism because the founder is Russian. Edit: I was corrected. The founder is Serbian. My apologies.
  - tome 2y ago
    The founder isn't Russian: https://vladimir.prelovac.com/ https://vladimir.prelovac.com/
    - BadHumans 2y ago
      That's my fault. Thanks for the correction. I edited my post.
  - kylecazar 2y ago
    I don't have an opinion either way, but they were perhaps referring to the announcement that they are integrating yandex as a source for images. I didn't follow it all closely, but there was some controversy about it.
  - axegon_ 2y ago
    > thinly veiled racism because the founder is Russian thanks for the laugh. As far as yandex goes, you are on the right track though: my grandad used to say, "If a russian ever says good morning to you, you have learned two things: it's not good and it's not morning". For the record, the founder is Serbian, As for the claim, sure, they aren't really hiding it: https://kagi.com/changelog#5340 https://kagi.com/changelog#5340
    - widowlark 2y ago
      so you're saying because they integrate other services to improve their search, that makes them an 'alternative UI' for that integration? Fascinating perspective, thanks!
- oidar 2y ago
  Do you have any evidence of this?
- jnsaff2 2y ago
  > "In their most recent blog post, Kagi announced the integration of Yandex for image search—a company based in Russia. During a discussion, Vlad (Kagi’s founder) stated, “We do not discriminate based on current geopolitical issues.” EDIT: this is what I found during a search. I did not claim they are fully backed by yandex.
  - simonw 2y ago
    That's not the same thing as being "an alternative UI for Yandex" - that's a partnership for one subset of the overall functionality.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - jnsaff2 2y ago
    More context https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio... Apparently they have been using yandex for 5 years as one of the search backends.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  This is just wrong. Kagi has its own index and uses many other indexes to augment theirs if theirs do not provide enough coverage for a search.
- dooglius 2y ago
  Even if that were true, it wouldn't mean that Yandex would have the ability to tie queries to accounts.
bayindirh 2y ago
Kagi doesn't store your search history currently.
- guappa 2y ago
  They say they don't, we can't know if it's true or not.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    You're right, but you can't be sure of anything in a greater sense. The only thing we can do is vote with our wallet if we see that they have lied all the way. This will only lead us to Russel's teapot [0]. BTW, their current privacy policy is at [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot [1]: https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy
    - hiddencost 2y ago
      We could of course also enact a robust regulatory state with the ability to audit and enforce these things, but we've decided against that it seems.
      - bayindirh 2y ago
        I don't know where you're from, but on this side of the pond we have GPDR.
        BadHumans 2y ago
        In the US, we don't.
        echoangle 2y ago
        How is GDPR enforced though? With enough disregard for the law, the service provider can just lie about the data they have. I don’t know of a mechanism where you can actually force an audit to confirm that. You can basically ask the provider for all the data they have about you, but you can’t find out if they’re lying.
garrtt 2y ago
This is the same reason I still haven't become a paying customer. If Kagi had a similar account creation / payment processing setup as Mullvad VPN I would be all in.
- do_not_redeem 2y ago
  You can pay with bitcoin if you want. Bitcoin is not fully anonymous (but for that matter, neither is cash-in-the-mail since TLAs store photos of the outside of envelopes, but I digress). Kagi itself doesn't have the data needed to de-anonymize the transaction, so it's as anonymous as you can reasonably expect.
  - diggan 2y ago
    > Bitcoin is not fully anonymous Bitcoin is not anonymous at all, a public ledger is the opposite of anonymous if anything. At best it's pseudonymous. I think parent used Mullvad as an example as they actually support creation of accounts 100% anonymously, as you can literally mail them an envelope with cash.
    - mmh0000 2y ago
      > Bitcoin is not anonymous at all Well, acktshually… BTC can be anonymous through careful wallet management combined with methods such as CoinJoins[1]. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin
thesuitonym 2y ago
The way I got over it is knowing that even without an account, regular search providers are able to profile me and tie all my search history back to me anyway. And yes, even if I turn off cookies (but who does that anyway?) and block most advertising and tracking servers at the DNS. And before anyone says it, I know I can use tor and VPNs and every other privacy tool out there to become more anonymous, but that makes doing normal www things more difficult than it needs to be.
- sillyfluke 2y ago
  The way I got over eating 15 cinnabons every morning was by going to the city zoo and listening to a zoologist explain that they don't give fruit to animals in the zoo because the animals just end up getting diabetes. I figured if regular fruit from the grocery store is already that fucked, cutting 15 cinnabons out of the equation is not gonna save me. /s There's a simpler argument to use instead of trying to bend over backwards justifying this thing you really want to do but deep down know that it's bad for you. In fact, it's already become mainstream lingo. It's called You Only Live Once! Those are the only four words you have to utter and everyone who was about to start arguing with you will back way instantly and you'll save yourself these strained self-serving justifications. The beauty is there is no counter argument to such pristine nihilistic capitulation. Once Kagi, a startup, breaks the precedent with this credit card requirement crap and actually starts getting significant marketshare everyone else will say, "these guys just normalized requiring a credit card upfront for this type of service. That's great, we can now open another front in the enshittification of the internet and tie highly revealing information to real people more directly." And yes, some of these people will undoubtedly be less savory types and of more questionable moral character than the Kagi crew. And I dare say in all likelihood, so will the late stage Kagi crew as well. On the other hand, if you do a little good faith research you'll find some email and vpn providers do allow you to send cash (gasp) via postal service to activate your account. It doesn't matter if only one customer uses that option. It is the existence of that option that creates trust. Unless there is such an option or something nearly identical in ease and function, all these aspirational cross-my-heart-hope-to-die assurances are just ridiculous.
solardev 2y ago
You can sign up with a burner email and pay with Bitcoin. Does that help? https://blog.kagi.com/accepting-paypal-bitcoin https://blog.kagi.com/accepting-paypal-bitcoin
- smithcoin 2y ago
  But then the bitcoin could be traced back to Coinbase, where they probably used their bank information to buy it.
  - solardev 2y ago
    Yeah, it's not meant for absolute security, just additional obscurity.
    - parkaboy 2y ago
      I wish they supported Monero!
      - pbronez 2y ago
        The most effective way to advocate for Monero support is probably to contact OpenNode[1], Kagi's cryptocurrency payment processor. You can also chime in on Kagi's Feedback site [2]. Their founder specifically addressed Monero there [3] """ Just to acknowledge that Kagi already implements with OpenNode to accept crypto payments so this is specifically about Monero. > I understand the technical issues with implementing Monero, but given the number of users that will be attracted to Kagi specifically because if its privacy, it seems quite inconsistent to only offer non-anonymised payment formats. We heard the same argument before implementing crypto, and the reality is it attracted very small number of users (less than 0.3% Kagi users pay with crypto). Since this was extremely hard to implement, and there are already ways to convert Monero to Bitcoin so there is path to payment, and based on our previous experience we expect the impact of implementing Monero directly to be minimal, we have decided to focus our very limited resources elsewhere (eg. make search better). Thanks for understanding. """ [0] https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy [1] https://opennode.com/contact/ https://opennode.com/contact/ [2] https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala-bitcoinmonero https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala... [3] https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala-bitcoinmonero/103 https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala...
freehorse 2y ago
I cannot find where now, but pretty sure I read recently somewhere that they are working in a kind of anonymous token that can be used to not link the searches with one's account. But I cannot seem to find details, but it would be indeed cool if that happened and it would make some things much easier.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Sounds like Cloudflare Privacy Pass, invented in part to allow Tor users to move around without being stuck in captcha hell [0], I heard about them from someone who wanted to sell anonymous access to a service by handing out these tokens that can be redeemed but not tied back to the point of distribution, but I've never actually seen it implemented this way. In short, the extension receives blindly signed ‘passes’ for each authentication and these passes can be used to bypass future challenge solutions using an anonymous redemption procedure. For example, Privacy Pass is supported by Cloudflare to enable users to redeem passes instead of having to solve CAPTCHAs to visit Cloudflare-protected websites. [0] https://privacypass.github.io/ https://privacypass.github.io/
mossTechnician 2y ago
I'm hesitant too, due to the words of the CEO. We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy. https://www.reddit.com/r/searchengines/comments/m0i869/comment/ikpmm5q/ https://www.reddit.com/r/searchengines/comments/m0i869/comme...
- benhurmarcel 2y ago
  This is more recent: > There is no more incentive to collect, misuse, or otherwise do anything with user data. In fact, for Kagi, user data is a liability. We don’t want it. We have nothing useful to do with it. You have to log in for Kagi and create an account because that’s the nature of a subscription-based business model; you somehow have to tie the payment to an account. But other than that, there is really no incentive for Kagi to ever want to touch your data. https://blog.1password.com/real-cost-search-engines-interview/ https://blog.1password.com/real-cost-search-engines-intervie...
  - mossTechnician 2y ago
    I don't understand their assertion; Kagi has an incentive to collect data... Most companies do. The incentive is money. Kagi would not be the first company to collect data to monetize it later. And Kagi dreams big about all that data: Instead of being scared to share information with [your search engine], you will chose what data you want it to have and volunteer your data only after knowing its incentives align with yours... The search will be personal and contextual and excitingly so! https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    I don't think Kagi, at the moment, is doing anything nefarious with the data that they have. But that paragraph you quoted is pure marketing. >You have to log in for Kagi and create an account because that’s the nature of a subscription-based business model; you somehow have to tie the payment to an account. If data was really viewed as a liability, they would adopt a data minimization model similar to Mullvad and not tie user accounts and email addresses together at all.
bradgessler 2y ago
Kagi would benefit from offering the same account provisioning as Mullvad VPN. Generate a random number, collect payment for it with cash, crypto, or credit card, and leave it at that.

contagiousflow 2y ago

Can I ask what search engine you use then?

BadHumans 2y ago
Most of them. Duckduckgo, Startpage, Google, Mojeek, a few others. Depends on what I need at the time.

axegon_ 2y ago

[flagged]

widowlark 2y ago
citation needed?
BadHumans 2y ago
I don't use or trust Kagi but based on what I know about them from my research, this isn't true and sounds like thinly veiled racism because the founder is Russian. Edit: I was corrected. The founder is Serbian. My apologies.
- tome 2y ago
  The founder isn't Russian: https://vladimir.prelovac.com/ https://vladimir.prelovac.com/
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    That's my fault. Thanks for the correction. I edited my post.
- kylecazar 2y ago
  I don't have an opinion either way, but they were perhaps referring to the announcement that they are integrating yandex as a source for images. I didn't follow it all closely, but there was some controversy about it.
- axegon_ 2y ago
  > thinly veiled racism because the founder is Russian thanks for the laugh. As far as yandex goes, you are on the right track though: my grandad used to say, "If a russian ever says good morning to you, you have learned two things: it's not good and it's not morning". For the record, the founder is Serbian, As for the claim, sure, they aren't really hiding it: https://kagi.com/changelog#5340 https://kagi.com/changelog#5340
  - widowlark 2y ago
    so you're saying because they integrate other services to improve their search, that makes them an 'alternative UI' for that integration? Fascinating perspective, thanks!
oidar 2y ago
Do you have any evidence of this?
jnsaff2 2y ago
> "In their most recent blog post, Kagi announced the integration of Yandex for image search—a company based in Russia. During a discussion, Vlad (Kagi’s founder) stated, “We do not discriminate based on current geopolitical issues.” EDIT: this is what I found during a search. I did not claim they are fully backed by yandex.
- simonw 2y ago
  That's not the same thing as being "an alternative UI for Yandex" - that's a partnership for one subset of the overall functionality.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jnsaff2 2y ago
  More context https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio... Apparently they have been using yandex for 5 years as one of the search backends.
bayindirh 2y ago
This is just wrong. Kagi has its own index and uses many other indexes to augment theirs if theirs do not provide enough coverage for a search.
dooglius 2y ago
Even if that were true, it wouldn't mean that Yandex would have the ability to tie queries to accounts.

bayindirh 2y ago

Kagi doesn't store your search history currently.

guappa 2y ago
They say they don't, we can't know if it's true or not.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  You're right, but you can't be sure of anything in a greater sense. The only thing we can do is vote with our wallet if we see that they have lied all the way. This will only lead us to Russel's teapot [0]. BTW, their current privacy policy is at [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot [1]: https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy
  - hiddencost 2y ago
    We could of course also enact a robust regulatory state with the ability to audit and enforce these things, but we've decided against that it seems.
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      I don't know where you're from, but on this side of the pond we have GPDR.
      - BadHumans 2y ago
        In the US, we don't.
      - echoangle 2y ago
        How is GDPR enforced though? With enough disregard for the law, the service provider can just lie about the data they have. I don’t know of a mechanism where you can actually force an audit to confirm that. You can basically ask the provider for all the data they have about you, but you can’t find out if they’re lying.

garrtt 2y ago

This is the same reason I still haven't become a paying customer. If Kagi had a similar account creation / payment processing setup as Mullvad VPN I would be all in.

do_not_redeem 2y ago
You can pay with bitcoin if you want. Bitcoin is not fully anonymous (but for that matter, neither is cash-in-the-mail since TLAs store photos of the outside of envelopes, but I digress). Kagi itself doesn't have the data needed to de-anonymize the transaction, so it's as anonymous as you can reasonably expect.
- diggan 2y ago
  > Bitcoin is not fully anonymous Bitcoin is not anonymous at all, a public ledger is the opposite of anonymous if anything. At best it's pseudonymous. I think parent used Mullvad as an example as they actually support creation of accounts 100% anonymously, as you can literally mail them an envelope with cash.
  - mmh0000 2y ago
    > Bitcoin is not anonymous at all Well, acktshually… BTC can be anonymous through careful wallet management combined with methods such as CoinJoins[1]. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin

thesuitonym 2y ago

The way I got over it is knowing that even without an account, regular search providers are able to profile me and tie all my search history back to me anyway. And yes, even if I turn off cookies (but who does that anyway?) and block most advertising and tracking servers at the DNS. And before anyone says it, I know I can use tor and VPNs and every other privacy tool out there to become more anonymous, but that makes doing normal www things more difficult than it needs to be.

sillyfluke 2y ago
The way I got over eating 15 cinnabons every morning was by going to the city zoo and listening to a zoologist explain that they don't give fruit to animals in the zoo because the animals just end up getting diabetes. I figured if regular fruit from the grocery store is already that fucked, cutting 15 cinnabons out of the equation is not gonna save me. /s There's a simpler argument to use instead of trying to bend over backwards justifying this thing you really want to do but deep down know that it's bad for you. In fact, it's already become mainstream lingo. It's called You Only Live Once! Those are the only four words you have to utter and everyone who was about to start arguing with you will back way instantly and you'll save yourself these strained self-serving justifications. The beauty is there is no counter argument to such pristine nihilistic capitulation. Once Kagi, a startup, breaks the precedent with this credit card requirement crap and actually starts getting significant marketshare everyone else will say, "these guys just normalized requiring a credit card upfront for this type of service. That's great, we can now open another front in the enshittification of the internet and tie highly revealing information to real people more directly." And yes, some of these people will undoubtedly be less savory types and of more questionable moral character than the Kagi crew. And I dare say in all likelihood, so will the late stage Kagi crew as well. On the other hand, if you do a little good faith research you'll find some email and vpn providers do allow you to send cash (gasp) via postal service to activate your account. It doesn't matter if only one customer uses that option. It is the existence of that option that creates trust. Unless there is such an option or something nearly identical in ease and function, all these aspirational cross-my-heart-hope-to-die assurances are just ridiculous.

solardev 2y ago

You can sign up with a burner email and pay with Bitcoin. Does that help? https://blog.kagi.com/accepting-paypal-bitcoin https://blog.kagi.com/accepting-paypal-bitcoin

smithcoin 2y ago
But then the bitcoin could be traced back to Coinbase, where they probably used their bank information to buy it.
- solardev 2y ago
  Yeah, it's not meant for absolute security, just additional obscurity.
  - parkaboy 2y ago
    I wish they supported Monero!
    - pbronez 2y ago
      The most effective way to advocate for Monero support is probably to contact OpenNode[1], Kagi's cryptocurrency payment processor. You can also chime in on Kagi's Feedback site [2]. Their founder specifically addressed Monero there [3] """ Just to acknowledge that Kagi already implements with OpenNode to accept crypto payments so this is specifically about Monero. > I understand the technical issues with implementing Monero, but given the number of users that will be attracted to Kagi specifically because if its privacy, it seems quite inconsistent to only offer non-anonymised payment formats. We heard the same argument before implementing crypto, and the reality is it attracted very small number of users (less than 0.3% Kagi users pay with crypto). Since this was extremely hard to implement, and there are already ways to convert Monero to Bitcoin so there is path to payment, and based on our previous experience we expect the impact of implementing Monero directly to be minimal, we have decided to focus our very limited resources elsewhere (eg. make search better). Thanks for understanding. """ [0] https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy [1] https://opennode.com/contact/ https://opennode.com/contact/ [2] https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala-bitcoinmonero https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala... [3] https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala-bitcoinmonero/103 https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala...

freehorse 2y ago

I cannot find where now, but pretty sure I read recently somewhere that they are working in a kind of anonymous token that can be used to not link the searches with one's account. But I cannot seem to find details, but it would be indeed cool if that happened and it would make some things much easier.

jazzyjackson 2y ago
Sounds like Cloudflare Privacy Pass, invented in part to allow Tor users to move around without being stuck in captcha hell [0], I heard about them from someone who wanted to sell anonymous access to a service by handing out these tokens that can be redeemed but not tied back to the point of distribution, but I've never actually seen it implemented this way. In short, the extension receives blindly signed ‘passes’ for each authentication and these passes can be used to bypass future challenge solutions using an anonymous redemption procedure. For example, Privacy Pass is supported by Cloudflare to enable users to redeem passes instead of having to solve CAPTCHAs to visit Cloudflare-protected websites. [0] https://privacypass.github.io/ https://privacypass.github.io/

mossTechnician 2y ago

I'm hesitant too, due to the words of the CEO. We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy. https://www.reddit.com/r/searchengines/comments/m0i869/comment/ikpmm5q/ https://www.reddit.com/r/searchengines/comments/m0i869/comme...

benhurmarcel 2y ago
This is more recent: > There is no more incentive to collect, misuse, or otherwise do anything with user data. In fact, for Kagi, user data is a liability. We don’t want it. We have nothing useful to do with it. You have to log in for Kagi and create an account because that’s the nature of a subscription-based business model; you somehow have to tie the payment to an account. But other than that, there is really no incentive for Kagi to ever want to touch your data. https://blog.1password.com/real-cost-search-engines-interview/ https://blog.1password.com/real-cost-search-engines-intervie...
- mossTechnician 2y ago
  I don't understand their assertion; Kagi has an incentive to collect data... Most companies do. The incentive is money. Kagi would not be the first company to collect data to monetize it later. And Kagi dreams big about all that data: Instead of being scared to share information with [your search engine], you will chose what data you want it to have and volunteer your data only after knowing its incentives align with yours... The search will be personal and contextual and excitingly so! https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over
- ziddoap 2y ago
  I don't think Kagi, at the moment, is doing anything nefarious with the data that they have. But that paragraph you quoted is pure marketing. >You have to log in for Kagi and create an account because that’s the nature of a subscription-based business model; you somehow have to tie the payment to an account. If data was really viewed as a liability, they would adopt a data minimization model similar to Mullvad and not tie user accounts and email addresses together at all.

bradgessler 2y ago

Kagi would benefit from offering the same account provisioning as Mullvad VPN. Generate a random number, collect payment for it with cash, crypto, or credit card, and leave it at that.