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2023-01-27 - SearXNG: the open and privacy-respecting metasearch engine

SearXNG

SearXNG is a meta-search engine.

We already described SearXNG in the article entitled

"Are you aware of the privacy impact of online searches and thus the right choice of search engine? (updated)"

related to the search engines or meta-search engines which respect privacy.

We recall below, from that article, some information about SearXNG.


 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
| Founder                         |                   Features                        |                    Jurisdiction                  |           Kind                      |            14 eyes                    |
|-------------------------------- |-------------------------------------------------- |--------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------|-------------------------------------- |
| No founder; it's an open source | Self-hosted  - No cookies                         |                                                  |                                     |                                       |
|                                 | No user tracking  - No user profiling             |                                                  |                                     |                                       |
|                                 | About 70 supported search engines                 |                                                  |                                     |                                       |
|                                 | Easy integration with any search engine           |                                                  |                                     |                                       |
|                                 | Secure (HTTPS/SSL)                                | It is open source and depends on the location    |                                     |                                       |
|                                 |                                                   | of the server on which an instance is installed  |                                     |                                       |
|                                 |                                                   | and thus on user access                          | Metasearch engine - Private search  | It depends on the instance's location | 
|                                 |                                                   |                                                  |                                     |                                       |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SearXNG development was started in the middle of 2021 as a fork of the SearX project by its former maintainer.

You can find the differences between SearX and SearXNG

here.

Additionally, SearXNG can be used over Tor for online anonymity.

Privacy

Apart from what is published on the SearXNG documents web page, there is no specific privacy policy because SearXNG is open source; each system administrator can decide the privacy policy depending on the server's location on which the instance is installed.

How does SearXNG protect privacy?

SearXNG protects the privacy of its users in multiple ways regardless of the type of the instance (private, public). Removal of private data from search requests comes in three forms:

Result proxy

is supported, too. SearXNG does not serve ads or tracking content unlike most search services. So private data is not forwarded to third parties who might monetize it. Besides protecting users from search services, both referring page and search query are hidden from visited result pages.

What's happened when you send a query through a SearXNG instance?

We reproduce the steps below:

Is your data or personal data transmitted to search engines?

The answer is NO, and precisely:

In the end, only your query, the language you selected on the SearXNG instance, and the technical parameters needed to form the same query are transmitted to the search engines.

Can the search engines see your data or install cookies or other stuff on your browser?

The answer is: No, they cannot.

Indeed, the search engines (for example, DDG or qwant) that receive your query through the SearXNG instance:

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