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Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

blog.kagi.com

51–60 of 359 posts

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#53
Privacy Pass is great for reducing friction, but it still relies on trust in the issuer. A ZK-based approach (e.g., using zk-SNARKs or anonymous credentials) could let users prove they’re paid subscribers without revealing their identity or even interacting with Kagi’s servers beyond the initial proof. This would remove the need for trust while keeping the experience just as seamless. Would love to see more services explore this direction.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#54

Privacy Pass is great for reducing friction, but it still relies on trust in the issuer. A ZK-based approach (e.g., using zk-SNARKs or anonymous credentials) could let users prove they’re paid subscribers without revealing their identity or even interacting with Kagi’s servers beyond the initial proof. This would remove the need for trust while keeping the experience just as seamless. Would love to see more services…

Privacy Pass is an anonymous credential scheme that does exactly what you describe.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#55

This seems cool, but I still think the pricing of kagi is rather steep. It is $5/mo for 300 searches a month, which is really going to get you under 10 a day... That's insufficient. Then $10/mo (or $108/yr) for unlimited. I'm curious if anyone knows, are companies like Google and Microsoft making more than $10/mo/user? We often talk about paying with our data, but it is always unclear how much that data is worth. Kag…

> This seems cool, but I still think the pricing of kagi is rather steep. It is $5/mo for 300 searches a month, which is really going to get you under 10 a day... That's insufficient.

You can split your searches with search engine shortcuts on the desktop, and the search engine quickbar on mobile.

When I still was on the starter plan, I used Kagi whenever I had a search that if I use google, I know I will:

- get a bunch of listicles and AI slop (Kagi downranks and bundles these)

- get a buch of AI images (again, Kagi clearly labels and downranks these)

- have to do multiple google searches for, but can instead use Quick Answer for

- will get a bunch of Reddit pre-translated results for

- technical / scientific questions, because of the sites I can uprank/downrank/block

I used google for things like:

- highest building in the world

- $bandname Wikipedia / Discogs

- name of thing I can't remember but have the approximate word for

You get the idea.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#56

Neat! It's rare to see that a service you use actually does something that benefits the user rather that itself. An unexpected, but a really pleasant surprise. I wish this extension would integrate better with the browser by automatically understanding the context. That is, if I'm in a "regular" mode it'll use my session, but if I'm in a "private browsing" mode (`browser.extension.inIncognitoContext`) it'll use Priva…

> It's rare to see that a service you use actually does something that benefits the user rather that itself

The reason it's become so rare is most companies in this space (heck tons of tech companies period) have used a business model of offering a thing to one group of users and then turning around and selling the results of that thing to another group of users, where the latter group is the one actually driving your revenue. This by default almost assumes a hostility towards the former group because their interests will of course be at odds with the interests of the latter group.

What's refreshing about Kagi and other new tech companies is they have dumped this model in favor of having just one group that they serve and drive revenue from (ie. the 'old' model).

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#57

Pretty cool feature. The unstated downside is that any personalization settings like dark mode, translation, and lens settings are still seemingly tied to account login.

> The unstated downside It is clearly stated in the blog post :) We even considered variations of having some settings preserved in local storage and impact of that on anonymity. Ultimately decided that was not worth it. Check the FAQ section (towards the end) for full details and analysis: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass#faq

You could have a few built in options (like for domain filtering and customisation) for the privacy people. Could even be community sourced so there's no onus on Kagi itself.

So for example there could be a built in "developers" preset that might make domains useful to coding higher ranked (and down rank or block things like stack overflow clones). Etc etc.

Basically this could allow a smaller amount of customisation with less ability to identify a specific user.

I also use Orion and I do like the idea someone else had of integrating an option for Kagi Privacy mode into the "incognito" tabs specifically as an option!

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#59

This is sick, fantastic work. I have built blind signature authentication stuff before (similar to privacy pass) and one thing I’m curious about is how you (will) handle multi device access? I understand you probably launched with only unlimited search users in order to mitigate the same user losing access to their tokens on a different device. But any ideas for long term plans here? When I built these systems in the…

Yes, multi-device is definitely not easy. We've played with a few ideas, but it is definitely not a question with an obvious answer. For now, our rate-limiting allows you to use Privacy Pass on a few different devices by having each generate tokens independently. We will see how this goes and listen to user feedback before going back to the drawing board.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#60

This seems cool, but I still think the pricing of kagi is rather steep. It is $5/mo for 300 searches a month, which is really going to get you under 10 a day... That's insufficient. Then $10/mo (or $108/yr) for unlimited. I'm curious if anyone knows, are companies like Google and Microsoft making more than $10/mo/user? We often talk about paying with our data, but it is always unclear how much that data is worth. Kag…

I don't know nor do I really care what other search companies are making. I pay $10/month for Kagi because it works for me and it's good. I don't even care about Kagi as a company (I don't care about any company); their search works. It's a good product, and I'm happy to keep paying for it as long as it keeps being useful while all the free competitors are still terrible. I use about 2k searches per month. edit: Even…

So funny that blocking Pinterest comes up in all discussions on Kagi (I've mentioned it myself in the past). I almost think people might pay $1 a month just to block Pinterest.
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