Web Search Private

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Resources to stay safe and secure online
September 10, 2020 By Sven Taylor — 419 Comments
This new and improved guide aims to be the most in-depth resource available on private search engines. We’ll examine the best private search engines for 2020, how to keep your data safe when searching, and also some search engines to avoid.
Search engines may help you find what you’re looking for, but it often comes at a price: your privacy.
Most of the big search engines today are essentially data collection tools for advertising companies. Collecting your private data helps these companies to make money with targeted ads, which is a booming industry. Unless you are using a private search engine, your data is ending up in the hands of third parties and you are the product.
Here is the information being collected by some of the larger (not private) search engines:
Using a search engine can disclose highly personal information about you, such as medical issues, employment status, financial information, political beliefs, and other private details. This data, of course, can be collected, stored, and linked to your data profile (and real identity). The only way to effectively “opt out” is to keep your data safe and out of the hands of the data collectors.
In this new and improved guide, we’re going to take a deep dive into the world of private search engines, while also covering some FAQs and best practices for keeping your data safe and private. Table of contents:
All recommendations in this guide are my own opinions based on extensive testing and research.
Finding the best private search engine for your unique needs is a subjective process and there’s no one-size-fits-all. You have many factors to consider. Ideally, a search engine would return great results while also respecting your privacy. Unfortunately, there is often a tradeoff here, so it really comes down to the user and what you determine works best for your situation.
Any of the private search engines in this guide may be the best fit for your needs. You can test them all to see which one is the best fit.
Metasearch vs search: Most of the private search engines discussed below are technically metasearch engines, because they pull search results from other search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yandex. The one exception to this is Mojeek, which is a true crawler-based search engine with its own index (discussed below). There are also a few search engines that fall in the middle by deploying their own crawler, but also pulling results from other search engines.
Note: This list is not necessarily in rank order. Choose the best search engine for you based on your own threat model and unique needs.
Here are the best private search engines:
MetaGer is an open source metasearch engine based in Germany, which gets search results from Bing, Yandex, Yahoo and others, as well as having its own web crawler. It is an interesting project, which started in 1996, and is now operated by a non-profit foundation in Germany called SUMA-EV (Association for Free Access to Knowledge). I tested out MetaGer for this guide and found the results to be good, with some nice features as well:
MetaGer also does well in terms of privacy, as they explain here. Similar to Startpage, MetaGer converts search requests into anonymous queries through a proxy server, which also provides the anonymous viewing option with all results. User IP addresses are truncated for privacy, although user agent info is passed along to their search partners. MetaGer does not utilize cookies or any other tracking methods.
For operation stability and security, MetaGer does keep some logs on their own servers (in Germany), but this data is kept no longer than 96 hours and is automatically erased. MetaGer finances operations from user donations, as well as ads that are served through partner networks, such as Bing, which appear at the top of results. If you purchase a membership, however, you can get completely ad-free search results. (Without memberships and personal donations, MetaGer states they would not be able to continue operations.)
MetaGer runs all of its infrastructure on servers in Germany, which is a good privacy jurisdiction with strict data protection laws. Like Searx, MetaGer is completely open source. For those on the Tor network, MetaGer also hosts a .onion site. You can read more about using MetaGer, as well as their apps, plugins, and features, on their website. We’ll close here with an interesting quote I found on their site (translated from German):
Did you know that according to the Patriot Act, all internet servers and search engines physically located in the jurisdiction of the United States are obligated to disclose any information to the intelligence services? Your personal data is at risk even if the servers and search engines don’t store any information: it is sufficient if the intelligence agencies read and store everything at the internet point of connection. All MetaGer servers are located in Germany.
Swisscows is a Switzerland-based private search engine that does very well with privacy and security. They promise no tracking or data collection, and even have a “Swiss Fort Knox” data center for their server infrastructure. From their website:
In terms of privacy, Swisscows is one of the top choices, arguably better than many other private search engines. From their privacy policy:
We do not collect any of our visitors’ personal information. None whatsoever. When using Swisscows neither your IP address is recorded nor is the browser you are using (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) collected. No analyses are made, which operating system our users use (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.); your search are not recorded either. We record absolutely no data from our visitors. The only information we store is the number of search requests entered daily at Swisscows, to measure the total overall traffic on our website and to evaluate a breakdown of this traffic by language and mere overall statistics.
Swisscows completely does away with statistics and analyses on its visitors in order to protect your privacy. Given that we do not collect any information on our visitors, we are also not able to identify your place of residence. Swisscows does not conduct any geo targeting.
Swisscows does not use Cookies which can be used to identify of a user.
In testing out Swisscows for this guide, I found it to provide good results, which are primarily sourced from Bing.
Family-Friendly content – One unique aspect of Swisscows is that they are passionate about family-friendly content. As they explain on their about page:
While some people may not like the fact that Swisscows filters some adult content, others may see this as a great feature, especially those with children.
Because Swisscows does not pass on user data from search requests, they are unable to effectively monetize their service through ad partners, which means they largely rely on donations and sponsorships to maintain operations (sponsors can get a banner ad at the top of results):
For the reason that Swisscows does NOT monitor users, thus doesn’t spy out data and NO data is sold to advertisers, only few companies are interested in advertising on Swisscows. This revenue unfortunately doesn’t cover the expenses on data center, development, employees, etc.
Searx is an open source metasearch engine that gathers results from other search engines while also respecting user privacy. One unique feature of Searx is that you can run your own instance. The drawback with your own instance, however, is that your search results won’t be mixed with other users. Searx is open source and available on GitHub.
Another great aspect of Searx is that it is very customizable. You can modify exactly what search engines Searx pulls results from in the user preferences area. You can also narrow down results with different categories. It’s all under your control.
One drawback with Searx is that it’s been getting blocked by Google because it scrapes Google results. There does not seem to be a good solution to this issue at this time, other than using other sources for your search results.
SearX can still pull results from other search engines, however.
Because Searx is open source and freely available for anyone to use, there are a number of different public instances you can utilize. However, just like with Tor nodes, anyone could set up a “rogue” instance and potentially log user activity, as Searx explains here:
What are the consequences of using public instances?
If someone uses a public instance, he/she has to trust the administrator of that instance. This means that the user of the public instance does not know whether his/her requests are logged, aggregated and sent or sold to a third party.
This might mean that governments and other rogue third parties are operating instances, but that is pure speculation.
Jurisdiction: Not applicable (open source, not based in any one location)
Unfortunately, the people behind the Searx project do not have the resources to run a public instance. Instead, they recommend other public instances run by various individuals or entities. But how do you know they aren’t logging your search results on their server? (You don’t!)
One solution to this is to host your own private instance. For most people, however, this is not a practical solution.
Qwant is another private search engine that is based in France and primarily sources search results from Bing. Being based in Europe, the data privacy protections are much stricter, as compared to the United States, for example. Qwant promises to protect user privacy (no tracking) and keep people from getting stuck in the filter bubble. Here is an excerpt from Qwant’s privacy policy:
When you use Qwant as a search engine, we don’t put any cookie on your browser that may allow us or others to recognize you or to follow you everywhere on the Internet. We don’t use any tracking device (pixel, fingerprinting…). We don’t collect and we don’t store any history or your searches. When you search, your query is instantly anonymized by being dissociated from your IP address, in accordance with what the French data controller advises. Long story short, what you are doing with Qwant is part of your privacy and we don’t want to know.
Qwant also has good search filtering options, to filter results by different categories (web, news, social, images, videos, and shopping) as well as date filters. The Qwant homepage also includes news stories, trending people, events, and other interest stories. Qwant continues to grow, with over 10 million searches per day, and is one of the most popular websites in France (top 50).
Overall, Qwant is a good option for a private search engine, with many features in place to protect user privacy.
DuckDuckGo is a US-based search engine that was started by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008. It generates search results from over 400 sources including Wikipedia, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo. DuckDuckGo has a close partnership with Yahoo (owned by Verizon), which helps it to better filter search results.
In testing out DDG for this private search guide, I found it to work pretty well, with relevant search terms being displayed for most tests. Search results for DuckDuckGo are primarily sourced from Bing.
To finance operations, DuckDuckGo generates money through advertisements and affiliates, which is explained here. Similar to Google and other search engines, DuckDuckGo will display ads at the top of your searches. DuckDuckGo has partnered with Amazon and eBay as affiliates.
Searches are saved – DuckDuckGo has a verbose privacy policy that mainly discusses other search engines. It’s only when you get toward the bottom that you learn DDG is saving all your search queries:
We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings.
Why is DuckDuckGo saving your search queries?
The privacy policy states, “We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings.”
In researching the background DuckDuckGo, I uncovered some interesting history. The founder of DDG, Gabriel Weinberg, was also behind a social network called Names Database, which collected the real names and addresses of its users. He then sold Names Database (and all the user data) to Classmates.com for “approximately $10 million in cash” in March 2006.
DuckDuckGo was launched a few years later, in 2008 and was branded as a privacy search engine. It rose to popularity in 2013 following the Snowden revelations. DuckDuckGo remains one of the most popular private search engines to date and is well-regarded in the privacy community.
Jurisdiction: United States (runs on Amazon servers in the US!)
Unlike some of the other private (meta)search engines on this page, Mojeek is true search engine with its own crawler. In an open reddit discussion, Mojeek claimed to have indexed 2.3 billion pages, with the goal of doubling that by the end of the year.
For those who want complete search independence from the corporate data monoliths of Google and Bing, Mojeek offers an interesting proposition. When I tested out various search terms, the results were hit and miss. Mojeek staff informed me they will continue to fine tun the search algorithm to improve results.
In terms of privacy, Mojeek does pretty well. It claims to be the “first ever no tracking/privacy orientated search engine” from when it first started. The Mojeek privacy policy details how user data is generally protected:
Mojeek doesn’t implement any kind of specific user tracking, whether that be at the time of visit or subsequently via standard logs, which Mojeek does keep. These logs contain the time of visit, page requested, possibly referral data, and browser information. IP addresses are not recorded (except in rare circumstances[1]), instead the IP address is replaced with a simple two letter code indicating the visitors country of origin. By doing this, Mojeek removes any possibility of tracking or identifying any particular user.
[1] Mojeek does make one exception to this rule, if a search query is deemed related to illegal and unethical practices relating to minors, then the full log including visiting IP address will be kept and gladly handed over to any official authorities that ask. If you’re at all concerned about this exception then Mojeek is not the search engine for you.
Mojeek staffed explained to me via email that this last section relating to illegal content is meant to act as a “deterrent” where they “reserve the right” to log IP addresses. Overall, not a bad privacy policy.
Hopefully Mojeek can continue to improve their search results and one day rival the big players.
YaCy is an interesting private search engine that distinguishes itself from others in that it runs on a peer-to-peer network (decentralized). It was created in 2004 by Michael Christen and is entirely open source. Here is a brief description from YaCy’s website:
It is fully decentralized, all users of the search engine network are equal, the network does not store user search requests and it is not possible for anyone to censor the content of the shared index. We want to achieve freedom of information through a free, distributed web search which is powered by the world’s users.
With YaCy, there is no central server, which could be seized or tapped by authorities. Rather, all peers in the network are equal and can be used for crawling or in “proxy mode” to index pages for other users. To use YaCy, you need to download the free software on your operating system, available for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (but there is a demo portal here).
Jurisdiction: Not applicable. (Being a decentralized and open-source platform, YaCy does not appear to fall under any particular jurisdiction, similar to Searx.)
Any of the private search engines above may be a good choice if you are looking for more privacy.
With that being said, there are other search engines on the market that offer varying degrees of privacy, tracking protection, and encryption.
Below are a few search engines that fall into the middle ground:
Since people may have questions about these search engines, we’ll take a close look at each option below.
The search engines below may be great choices depending on your threat model, needs, and preferences.
Another interesting search engine out of Europe (Denmark) is Givero. The basic philosophy behind Givero is to donate a share of gross profits to charities, which the user can specify. (Money is generated through ads, like most search engines.)
In terms of privacy, Givero has both pros and cons. For pros, Givero is based in Europe (with full GDPR privacy protections) and does not log search history or store profile data. By default, however, Givero does not offer the full protections of the private search engines above. This is clear from their privacy policy, where we read:
To display relevant search results and to prevent fraudulent activities, data is transferred to our search partners who only use it to provide better search results on Givero – read more below. [The partners are Bing and CodeFuel.]
The following data is transferred to our search partners when you submit a search request: IP address, user agent string, search term, country and language settings, filter settings for adult content, active search filter settings (e.g. page number information), an optional Bing ID (read more below) and the ID of the organization that should benefit from your search.
This is one drawback with metasearch engines that get their search results from other providers, in this case Bing. Some private search engines are able to work with search partners without compromising any data. Givero is not there yet. (Previously, the people behind Givero worked to create their own search engine called Findx, based on Gigablast, but could not make the project work for various reasons.)
Brian Rasmusson, co-founder of Givero, told Restore Privacy that Bing currently will not allow Givero to mask user IP addresses, but may consider doing this when monthly searches reach a certain threshold. However, Rasmusson also explained that Givero has successfully incorporated other privacy protections for its users:
What we have done is to make them [Bing] turn on their internal “privacy flag” that Bing operates with. This means that data from our users is not used for remarketing, and solely used for the Givero service (e.g. for fraud prevention). So that is always on, and cannot be changed on a user level unlike the Bing ID, which controls personalized results (the “filter bubble”).
Givero has also open sourced their Instant Answers (like DuckDuckGo) and their list of Search Bangs (unlike DuckDuckGo) on Github here.
Similar to Givero, Ecosia donates a portion of profits to charity. Unlike Givero, ho
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