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Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

blog.kagi.com

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61–70 of 359 posts

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#61

Post by retrorangular »

Ironically, I couldn't access this page while using Tor. Reading it from another device though, it seems like a great announcement, I love the idea.

I also would be interested in a service like this for attestation on other sites. Device attestation has chilling privacy implications, but if you could have a paid service with a presumably trusted entity like Kagi attest that you are a legitimate user (but hide your identity), maybe more of the Internet could be browsed anonymously, while still minimizing spam.

I get why many sites currently block Tor and VPN users, or even users in incognito or without a phone number, as the Internet is essentially unusable without anti-spam measures. That said, I do think anonymity has its place (especially for browsing, even if commenting weren't allowed), and maybe ideas like this could allow for anonymity without the Internet being riddled with spam.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#63

Post by pavon »

This is very cool. I'm curious about why there is a limit on the number of tokens generated per month, when this is only currently offered to unlimited accounts. Since the tokens all expire at the end of the month, tokens can't be horded to use Kagi after a subscription ends. Perhaps it is instead a resource issue where token generation is expensive. In that case though, I would think limiting tokens/day would be more appropriate - there is already going to be a spike to generate new tokens on the first of the month, so if the server can handle that they can handle some users generating a batch of tokens each day.

This is not intended as criticism, just inquisitive.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#64

Post by ransom_rs »

alepacheco-dev wrote: post #51

I think you could use zero knowledge proofs here to accomplish the same thing but without having to worry about renewing tokens etc

A problem with "zero knowledge" proofs is that Kagi needs to verify that the user has paid for the service, which requires the server to have some knowledge about the client at some point.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#65

Post by mortar »

I’m not insinuating for even a second that Kagi actually do this, but as a general rule, isn’t any privacy claim dubious at the moment given that more and more governments appear to be able to compel companies to identify their users (especially those searching for illegal content) and further forcefully insist they not disclose it?

It’s disheartening to think the great progress we’re making in this sector could be undermined in a few seconds against any companies efforts with a trivial backdoor.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#66

Post by red_hare »

godelski wrote: post #18

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…

You can't expect world percentages to match US percentages. The US is only 5% of the world's population and has a very different relationship to search. Also, only 63% of the world is online, so what does "90% of global" even mean?

Back-of-the-envelope:

- 2tn searches per year.

- US is 20% of all searches.

- Us revenue is 76bn

$76bn / (2tn * 0.2) = $0.19 / search

So, getting 300 searches for less than $0.02 per search sounds like a pretty good deal.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#67

Post by ransom_rs »

mortar wrote: post #65

I’m not insinuating for even a second that Kagi actually do this, but as a general rule, isn’t any privacy claim dubious at the moment given that more and more governments appear to be able to compel companies to identify their users (especially those searching for illegal content) and further forcefully insist they not disclose it? It’s disheartening to think the great progress we’re making in this sector could be u…

If the system is implemented correctly then Kagi cryptographically can't link a particular search to a particular user.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#68

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

mortar wrote: post #65

I’m not insinuating for even a second that Kagi actually do this, but as a general rule, isn’t any privacy claim dubious at the moment given that more and more governments appear to be able to compel companies to identify their users (especially those searching for illegal content) and further forcefully insist they not disclose it? It’s disheartening to think the great progress we’re making in this sector could be u…

It depends on how hard those companies work beforehand to prevent themselves from being able to comply with such requests beforehand. Signal is a good example of this, Kagi seems to be onboard also.

I haven't looked closely enough at this token thingy Kagi is doing but it seems on the surface like it might scratch the itch by letting them decouple the accepting-payment part of their service from the providing-results part such that they know that you've paid, but not which payer you are.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#69

Post by HanClinto »

godelski wrote: post #18

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 subscribe to an unlimited family plan. When considering how much cleaner my web experience is, it's a no-brainer. Default search engine on all our phones and devices.

They're my portal to the web. It's less like an optional web service (like a streaming service), and it feels more like I'm paying for them to be my ISP.

Re: Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search

#70

Post by alexwebb2 »

mortar wrote: post #65

I’m not insinuating for even a second that Kagi actually do this, but as a general rule, isn’t any privacy claim dubious at the moment given that more and more governments appear to be able to compel companies to identify their users (especially those searching for illegal content) and further forcefully insist they not disclose it? It’s disheartening to think the great progress we’re making in this sector could be u…

I think the idea here is that it literally can't be traced to the user – at no point is there anything passed that would allow Kagi to make the association between the user and the query.
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