Questions for any forum members using SearX

brent

the benefits of being a proxy are nice; it would seem to nullify redirects one gets now.

I've been assured many times over the years I would like it,
Used it 4 years ago and 2 animal pervert sites (bestial) were in my top 10 the first time I used it and all I was looking for was a car part...I didn't click on them but was truly nauseous.( When was the last time a piece of software made you sick to your stomach)?

Want to give it another chance. Setting up a local private instance, routing to specific ports, etc seems easy.
But is it worth it?
If my criteria was accuracy how does SearX rate?
As far was getting what I'm looking for I would rate Google a 1 since it returns nothing I look for. DDG I would give a 6.
SEARX QUESTIONS:
Is being an "aggregate" (aren't all search engines 'aggregating the top layer of the web?) an advantage?

If yahoo, bing, and google searches are mostly garbage, isn't SearX going to give those same crappy results?

I have no use for Tor and deep/dark searching but does Searx go below the top layer a little more than the others?

What makes it great besides enhanced privacy?

thanks for any insight

BuzzPCSOS

brent I have never bothered with a proxy because the advantages of a proxy were simply not something I have ever considered necessary.
I don't like OSs that snoop because typically that means that the suppliers are releasing poorly tested software and relying on telemetry to help them debug it once it has been released. Telemetry also tends to use resources that causes my computer to be slow. It is more about performance concerns than privacy.
I bookmarked Disroot SearX (I think that is the one you are referring to) because it was recommended to me. To be honest I have never used it seriously enough to make it my default search engine.
My go-to search engine is DuckDuckGo which is clean, clear and has lots of features that I prefer to Google's. It doesn't pester me with requirements to sign-in and search results are straightforward.
I like to change my DNS provider to Mullvad or Quad9. If you are using Firefox there are additional steps to implement this because Firefox chooses it's own DNS provider independently of system settings.
That's it. I hope some of that was relevant to your question and maybe helpful to you.

brent

BuzzPCSOS

BuzzPCSOS To be honest I have never used it seriously enough to make it my default search engine.
My go-to search engine is DuckDuckGo which is clean, clear and has lots of features that I prefer to Google's. It doesn't pester me with requirements to sign-in and search results are straightforward.

that's where I am at exactly ^^ --that setup.
That was helpful, thanks Buzz. If it ain't broke I guess.

BuzzPCSOS

brent A while back I took a look at a few online privacy reports. Mostly my setup returned a fair level of privacy. My I.P. still reported my location because I do not use a proxy so nothing unexpected. I did notice that the main security risk seemed to be that WebRTC was not disabled. This is a routine addition to your setup when some proxies are implemented.
A little bit of research showed me that WebRTC could be disabled directly in Firefox by entering into about:config then setting media.peerconnection.enabled to False. Job done. Unfortunately I soon found that many websites that I had previously enjoyed no-longer worked as they should. I convinced myself into believing that this was a good thing and ran with it for a few days. Nope. Too much stuff just did not work so WebRTC is now enabled again. I have included the settings in case you want to try it for yourself. Some websites seemed to load faster with WebRTC disabled and obviously my online security was that little bit better. Your experience might be different because we all do different stuff online.

brent

BuzzPCSOS back in my Master-Of-About:Config days...I did disable this (WebRTC) once in FF. What it did was render me unable to log in to this forum, among other breakages. Never again 🙂

"A while back I took a look at a few online privacy reports. Mostly my setup returned a fair level of privacy. My I.P. still reported my location because I do not use a proxy so nothing unexpected."

There was two of these sites in particular I used a lot. Like you I rated well and did not care about the IP address.

I once found a way in about:config to have the browser spoof pixels/fonts/etc (measurable things) but I don't remember it. Once I learned my two FF forks took care of all this stuff I have grown happily lax.

Security has been a journey in Linux...I remember relying on browser extensions to do a lot of that dirty work for me. Long time since I've trusted them. Somebody should revive that old Firefox Hacks and Tricks thread I haven't seen for 3 years...never done learning 🙂

Axios

brent Something always leaks it about what you want leaked
hard road to travel most the time.
I like everyone else was hot and heavy then nothing ..lol

brent

Axios Something always leaks it about what you want leaked
hard road to travel most the time.

yep ^^^
Came a time when I just said to myself 'ya know, pretty damn secure is good enough' so I left that particular security concern long in the rearview mirror

Axios Something always leaks it about what you want leaked

very much pick your battles agreed.