Introducing Privacy Pass authentication for Kagi Search

Today we are announcing a new privacy feature coming to Kagi Search. Privacy Pass is an authentication protocol first introduced by Davidson et al., in [1], and recently standardized by the IETF as RFCs [2—4]. At the same time, we are announcing the immediate availability of Kagi’s Tor onion service.

In general terms, Privacy Pass allows “Clients” (generally users) to authenticate to “Servers” (like Kagi) in such a way that while the Server can verify that the connecting Client has the right to access its services, it cannot determine which of its rightful Clients is actually connecting. This is particularly useful in the context of a privacy-respecting paid search engine, where the Server wants to ensure that the Client can access the services, and the Client seeks strong guarantees that, for example, the searches are not associated with them.

Kagi have been doing a lot of cool stuff lately.

8 Likes

Glad to see them keeping up with their honest goals of providing good search with privacy in mind.

1 Like

Just came across this and I’m a bit confused why they want you to install an extension to use it with Tor Browser. It’s a bit self defeating, isn’t it?

Well, as long as browsers don’t have something like a built-in Privacy Pass API, you’ll need an external application (extension) to manage and generate your tokens. That’s just how it works. I would advise against using it with Tor Browser or Mullvad Browser.

1 Like