Probably stupid question: let’s say I selfhost searxng only for myself: google & Co can track all my searches, but doesn’t they pair all the data to the IP of my server? And because of this, they will not be able to show personalized ads to me, using my laptop. Is this wrong?
Comment on LibreY vs SearXNG, which one do you suggest and why?
unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months agoThe main goal of these projects (SearxNG, Piped, Invidious, Nitter…) is to make it way harder to track users by having thousands of users make requests from one single place. If you host this service just for yourself… you’d get the same tracking as using the service itself.
Self-hosting just for yourself damages the community a bit because your data will not be used to confuse Google and the other guys.
tubbadu@lemmy.kde.social 4 months ago
SchizoDenji@lemm.ee 4 months ago
If the public IP is same, they can serve the same ads.
tubbadu@lemmy.kde.social 4 months ago
And what if the server has a static IP address?
SchizoDenji@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Doesn’t matter. They can still serve you ads.
zaphod@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
That’s a goal, but it’s hardly the only goal.
My goal is to get a synthesis of search results across multiple engines while eliminating tracking URLs and other garbage. In short it’s a better UX.fir me first and foremost. Privacy (through elimination of cookies and browser fingerprinting) is just a convenient side effect.
And it’s absolutely false to say you get the same effect. Intermediating my access to those search engines means things like cookies and fingerprinting cannot be used to link my search history to my browsing activity.
Furthermore, in my case I host SearX on a VPS that’s independent of my broadband connection which means even IP can’t be used to correlate my activity.