Build Your Own Private Search Engine For More Privacy with Your Own Locally Hosted

Опубликовано: 03 Ноябрь 2024
на канале: The Tech Wing

146

While there are a variety of privacy-focused search engines available like StartPage and DuckDuckGo, nothing can offer the complete trust offered by creating one's own search engine. For complete trust and security, Searx can be used as free metasearch engine which can be hosted locally and index results from over 70 different search engines.

Search engines inevitably carry some traces of metadata about anyone who uses them, even if just temporarily. If you don't want to trust this data to a third-party search engine, the only solution is to host your own. One could choose to host this on an external server or even use it on a local network.
Many search engines also create user profiles even for website viewers who do not register accounts. While it is possible to see the customization of search results according to mined data as a convenience, it can also be seen as an invasion of privacy or even a form of censorship. A metasearch engine instance facilitates the same valuable search results while limiting the type and amount of data which can be gathered about individual users, especially if multiple users are using a given instance.

Step 1Choose a Local or Web-Based Instance

Before installing Searx, it's best to first decide on what sort of access you would like to have to the Searx instance. Searx, when installed, is accessible through a web browser, similar to any other search engine. This instance could be accessed on a remote web server or simply through a local install of the metasearch tool.
In this tutorial, Searx is installed locally and accessed on the same device on which it is installed, but the software could also be used on an internet-connected server to create a web-based search engine, such as the public instances listed on GitHub.

Step 2Update Your Linux System

Once you've chosen a device to install a Searx instance on, the next step is to ensure that the system is updated and secure. On Debian-based Linux distributions like Ubuntu, this updating process can be completed using apt-get. The command below will update the system software repositories and upgrade any out-of-date software.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Option 1Using Docker

Docker can be used to install Searx in a container, assuming Docker is installed and configured on the system one wishes to install Searx on. We have a guide on setting up and using Docker, and Docker also has some instructions on its site. If you do not wish to use Docker, you can skip to the installation instructions in Option 2 for the classic installation method.

First, make a copy of the Searx repository on GitHub. Unlike in the classic installation method, the dependencies will be handled by Docker, so they do not need to be manually installed. To clone the Git repository, run the command below in a terminal window.

git clone github.com/asciimoo/searx.git

After the source code is finished downloading, move into the directory with cd.

docker build -t searx .

docker run -d --name searx -p 8888:8888 searx