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Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

blog.kagi.com

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Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#281

Post by Thorrez »

dalenw wrote: post #167
Thorrez wrote: post #165

>We are working on enabling this feature for Trial and Starter plans, which have access to a limited number of monthly searches. [...] and theoretically, users on this plan could redeem more tokens than the limit of searches allowed on their plan (again, we do not know who the user redeeming the tokens is, or what plan they are on). This doesn't make sense. Is this saying they're worried about a user on a trial or st…

They're saying that when someone uses a privacy token to search, they cannot track which account it's tied to. Therefor, they cannot track limits & billing.

The whole point of privacy tokens is you don't need to track usage. You track generation instead. They can track limits and billing at generation time. They know this. The sentence I previously quoted says so in the [...] section:

> We are working on enabling this feature for Trial and Starter plans, which have access to a limited number of monthly searches. Therefore, they risk a worse user experience if their generated tokens are lost (for example, due to uninstalling the extension)

If they don't track limits and billing at generation time, then there's no "risk [of] a worse user experience if their generated tokens are lost".

This ""risk [of] a worse user experience if their generated tokens are lost" is a logical reason to not enable privacy tokens for Trial and Starter plans. The risk of "users on this plan could redeem more tokens than the limit of searches allowed on their plan" is not a logical reason to not enable privacy tokens for Trial and Starter plans.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#282

Post by loughnane »

arlort wrote: post #250
loughnane wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I’m just one guy, but lack of Monero support kept me away. This feature looks like it narrows the gap a bit though. Nice work

Don't know a bunch about cryptocurrencies, but couldn't you get the benefits of monero by just converting monero to btc before paying? Are the conversion fees too high?

In addition to what u/akimbostrawman said, I feel like doing that would undermine long-term privacy by slowing adoption of a tool (monero in this case) in favor of something less private.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#283

Post by kobieps »

lawn wrote: post #239
kobieps wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

paying with bitcoin lightning has close to zero transfer fees edit: on desktop, on the page where you choose your plan, scroll to the bottom and look for the link to paying with OpenNode (btc lightning)

Lightning just isn't a good option as you first have to pay the expensive Bitcoin fees just to be able to use it... (And hope that you'll find a route otherwise you'll have to do it again.)

If $0.27 is an expensive fee then I don't have any answers to that.

Yeah routing can suck. First timers should use a lightning wallet with built in LSP support like ZEUS, BitKit, Phoenix, etc. Then routing is a non-issue.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#284

Post by ignoramous »

aryonoco wrote: post #137
Klaus23 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside of this is that if you are not on a larger network, the IP address will probably deanonymise you. Kagi knows you are logged in, and if you open a private browsing window to do a spicy search, they could link the searches. Fast switching between modes is undesirable.

And that's why Kagi has simultaneously rolled out their service availability on tor: http://kagi2pv5bdcxxqla5itjzje2cgdccuwept5ub6patvmvn3qgmgjd6... Tor has its flaws and criticisms, but it's really not on Kagi to fix them. With the combination of tor and their privacy pass, Kagi has gone further in allowing their paid users access to their services than anyone else. Disclaimer: Not associated with Kagi in anyway oth…

Tor has nothing to do with what GP said, which is, the flexibility offered by Kagi (to turn privacy pass on / off) is actually self defeating. If (even technical) users walk away thinking "why don't other platforms offer this", then that tells you all about the foot-gun that this flexibility brings.

(Privacy Pass in fact doesn't make sense outside of an anonymizing transport, which makes the current announcement an exercise in marketing, at best)

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#285

Post by alphabetter »

raphaelrobert wrote: post #279

I love that Kagi now uses Privacy Pass, and they look like a cool company in general. That being said, they essentially took the IETF draft I worked on for a while [1] and also my Rust implementation [2]. They built a thin wrapper [3] around my implementation and now call it "Kagi’s implementation of Privacy Pass". I think giving me some credit would have been in order. IETF work and work on open-source software is m…

Honestly, I think what TFA calls "Kagi’s implementation of Privacy Pass" is the integration of the feature into their server and clients, not the RFC (which they acknowledge), or the protocol implementation.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#286

Post by mvieira38 »

g-b-r wrote: post #191
MostlyStable wrote: post #100

One of the biggest complaints about Kagi from people who have not yet adopted it is their privacy concerns around having to login and have payment information. I'm not one of the people that has been concerned about that, but I'm curious to what extent this alleviates those concerns among those that have had them.

> I'm not one of the people that has been concerned about that, but I'm curious to what extent this alleviates those concerns among those that have had them. I am, it's mind-blowing to me that anyone would login to a search engine (yes, I know how many do it, now). After a brief verification of the system, I'm pretty sure I'll sign up, now

Most people are riding 24/7 with a Google session active, as it carries from Youtube/Chrome to Search. I don't think many realize it

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#287

Post by SamuelAdams »

raphaelrobert wrote: post #279

I love that Kagi now uses Privacy Pass, and they look like a cool company in general. That being said, they essentially took the IETF draft I worked on for a while [1] and also my Rust implementation [2]. They built a thin wrapper [3] around my implementation and now call it "Kagi’s implementation of Privacy Pass". I think giving me some credit would have been in order. IETF work and work on open-source software is m…

So if they add “credit to raphaelrobert”, or a copy of your license to their code somewhere, Kagi will be compliant?

I’ve never had any of my open source software used, and I typically license it with MIT, so I’m curious how other groups and organizations actually comply with the license.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#288

Post by kobieps »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #258
jacekm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi accepts bitcoins but Vlad (the founder) mentioned on their forum that so few people use this option that it does not make sense to work on accepting Monero.

Nobody wants to use BTC because of high fees and at this point its less a usable exchange of value than speculative asset. I personally would only ever use and trust a online service advertised as private/anonymous if it actually supported a private and anonymous currency (like some vpns do).

Anyone claiming high fees is straw manning

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#289

Post by literallyroy »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #287
raphaelrobert wrote: post #279

I love that Kagi now uses Privacy Pass, and they look like a cool company in general. That being said, they essentially took the IETF draft I worked on for a while [1] and also my Rust implementation [2]. They built a thin wrapper [3] around my implementation and now call it "Kagi’s implementation of Privacy Pass". I think giving me some credit would have been in order. IETF work and work on open-source software is m…

So if they add “credit to raphaelrobert”, or a copy of your license to their code somewhere, Kagi will be compliant? I’ve never had any of my open source software used, and I typically license it with MIT, so I’m curious how other groups and organizations actually comply with the license.

They are compliant, the code being used is under the MIT license.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#290

Post by AutistiCoder »

ripped_britches wrote: post #175
AutistiCoder wrote: post #139

Trying to understand Privacy Pass here. My understanding is, it's analogous to writing a note to your manager. That note is a random number written in ink your manager can't actually read; all they can do with that note is sign it. They ask God (used here to represent math itself) how to sign this note, and God gives them a unique signature that also theoretically cannot be used to calculate the number that's written…

> They ask God (used here to represent math itself) Thank you so much, I am 100% stealing this

I mean, invoking God kind of works for describing the idea that “math” sometimes knows a secret and can tell someone how to act on that secret without telling them the secret.
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