Kagi’s search engine adds a more private way to search

The paid search engine Kagi has added an even more private way to search. The new feature, called Privacy Pass, lets you make searches without having them traced back to you.

Privacy Pass is based on an authentication protocol standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force. It works by allowing users to authenticate themselves to servers like Kagi by generating tokens, which Kagi says are “indistinguishable from a randomly generated token from the server’s point of view.” The server can tell that a token has been generated, but it can’t link it to other tokens generated by the user during this time, or at any other time.

“Privacy Pass adds another layer of trust: we can verify that you have the right to search without knowing who you are or what you’re searching for,” Kagi says. “It’s one thing to promise we won’t track you; it’s another to make it technically impossible.” You can read more information about Privacy Pass from the company’s website.

To enable Privacy Pass, you simply have to toggle on the feature within Kagi. It’s currently available in its Orion browser for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, along with the Kagi app for Android. You can also find it within the Kagi browser extension for Firefox and Chrome.

Kagi will now also let you access the service directly from Tor through with the onion address: kagi2pv5bdcxxqla5itjzje2cgdccuwept5ub6patvmvn3qgmgjd6vid.onion. However, the company notes that “without Privacy Pass, you still need to be logged into your Kagi account to perform searches, making them all theoretically linkable back to a single account.”

For now, Kagi will only include Privacy Pass for users who subscribe to its $10 / month Professional plan and $25 / month Ultimate plan. It’s also available with its Family and Team plans. Kagi says it’s not yet offered in its free plan or $5 / month Starter subscription “due to technical limitations.” But in case you forget to use your subscription, Kagi recently announced that it won’t charge you for it.