Mullvad's privacy-focused search engine Leta is now free for all users | Leta acts as a proxy for Google and Brave search results
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Honest question: how can it be better to search Google through a proxy than using Google? You're still feeding the beast?
The beast eats personal data and sells it as ad revenue. If you are searching via proxy they can still collect general interest stats but not link it to an individual. It is not as profitable for them.
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Honest question: how can it be better to search Google through a proxy than using Google? You're still feeding the beast?
The Beast is fed by collecting data about you and then serving you back ads accordingly. This strips the data and the ads, so you feed them nothing.
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The Beast is fed by collecting data about you and then serving you back ads accordingly. This strips the data and the ads, so you feed them nothing.
I genuinely feel that Google's search results have gotten really bad, over the last years especially. I find DDG results to be much better generally. If Mullvad Leta also proxied DDG for another layer of privacy then I'd use it, but not even it's only search engines are Google and Brave.
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Ehhh. I mean, technically yes, but a proxy for search engine requests is probably functionally equivalent to the end user.
Also, if users don't know that such a thing exists and goes looking for a "search engine", they likely also want this.
One of my personal pet peeves is power stations --- a big lithium-ion battery pack hooked up to a charge controller and inverter and USB power supply and with points to attach solar panels --- being called a "solar generator". It's not a generator, doesn't use mechanical energy. But...a lot of people who think "I need electricity in an outage" just go searching for "generator". I don't like the practice, but I think that the aim is less to deceive users and more to try to deal with the fact that they functionally act in much the same role and people might not otherwise think of them.
I am less sympathetic to vendors who do the same with calling evaporative coolers "air conditioners". Those have some level of overlap in use, but are substantially different devices in price and capability.
It's like saying a passenger rail car is a freight engine
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It's like saying a passenger rail car is a freight engine
Is it really though? To the common person, it is most important thinking about the intent rather than what the word literally means. Like what people think of as AI may really just be a LLM, or VR may really be AR, or the like.
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It's like saying a passenger rail car is a freight engine
I think they just call them trains
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I think that would be Qwant. This is a search engine proxy.
Now I'm getting confused. Are DDG and Qwant not proxies for Bing?
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Your search query, IP address and iirc fingerprint gets shown to Bing everytime you make a search, so it's not private at all
But doesn't Leta use Bing as it's backend also?
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But doesn't Leta use Bing as it's backend also?
No, it uses Google and Brave search.
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At launch, access to Mullvad Leta was restricted to users with a paid Mullvad VPN account, but it is now free and open to all.
Mullvad Leta has been audited by Assured.
Just a heads up, some of the details in the FAQ and Terms of Service seem a bit outdated and might not be accurate anymore.
Some relevant information from their FAQ section is as follows:
What can I do with Leta?
Leta is a search engine. You can use it to return search results from many locations. We provide text search results, currently we do not offer image, news or any other types of search result. Leta acts as a proxy to Google and Brave search results. You can select which backend search engine you wish to use from the homepage of Leta.
Can I use Leta as my default search engine?
Yes, so long as your browser supports changing default search engines.
Navigate to https://leta.mullvad.net in your browser and right-click on the URL bar.
From there you should see Add “Mullvad Leta“ with the Mullvad VPN logo to the left.
If you do not see this, you can attempt to add a custom search engine to your browser with:
- The name set to: Leta
- The URL set to: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s
You can select which backend engine to use as follows:
- Google: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s&engine=google
- Brave: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s&engine=brave
Did you make your own search engine from scratch?
We did not, we made a front end to the Google and Brave Search APIs.
Our search engine performs the searches on behalf of our users. This means that rather than using Google or Brave Search directly, our Leta server makes the requests.
Searching by proxy in other words.
What is the point of Leta?
Leta aims to present a reliable and trustworthy way of searching privately on the internet.
However, Leta is useless as a service if you use the perfect non-logging VPN, a privacy focussed DNS service, a web browser that resists fingerprinting, and correlation attacks from global actors. Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies.
For most people Leta can be useful, as the above conditions cannot ever truly be met by systems that are available today.
What is a cached search?
We store every search in a RAM based cache storage (Redis), which is removed after it reaches over 30 days in age.
Cached searches are fetched from this storage, which means we return a result that can be from 0 to 30 days old. It may be the case that no other user has searched for something during the time that you search, which means you would be shown a stale result.
What happens to everything I search for?
Your searches are performed by proxy, it is the Leta server that makes calls to the Google or Brave Search API.
Each search that has not already been cached is saved in RAM for 30 days. The idea is that the more searches performed, the larger and more substantial the cached results become, therefore aiding with privacy.
All searches will be stored hashed with a secret in a cache. When you perform a search the cache will be checked first, before determining whether a direct call to Google or Brave Search should be made. Each time the Leta application is restarted (due to an upgrade, or new version) server side, a new secret hash is generated, meaning that all previous search queries are no longer visible to Leta
What could potentially be a unique search would become something that many other users would also search for.
What is running on the server side?
We run the Leta servers on STBooted RAM only servers, the same as our VPN servers. These servers run the latest Ubuntu LTS, with our own stripped down custom Mullvad VPN kernel which we tune in-house to remove anything unnecessary for the running system.
The cached search results are stored in an in-memory Redis key / value store.
The Leta service is a NodeJS based application that proxies requests to Google or Brave Search, or returns them from cache.
We gather metrics relating to the number of cached searches, vs direct searches, solely to understand the value of our service.
Additionally we gather information about CPU usage, RAM usage and other such information to keep the service running smoothly.
Leta acts as a proxy to Google and Brave search
Great! As much as I love DDG, Google is unfortunately still superior and I had no choice but to suck it up and use the latter from time to time. If I could use Google by way of proxy to preserve privacy, then this is great news!
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I don't see them claiming it is
It is still a good reason not to use Ecosia, however.
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Nice! I've been wanting to get off startpage for a while now. This is a perfect replacement.
Wait... what's wrong with startpage?
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At launch, access to Mullvad Leta was restricted to users with a paid Mullvad VPN account, but it is now free and open to all.
Mullvad Leta has been audited by Assured.
Just a heads up, some of the details in the FAQ and Terms of Service seem a bit outdated and might not be accurate anymore.
Some relevant information from their FAQ section is as follows:
What can I do with Leta?
Leta is a search engine. You can use it to return search results from many locations. We provide text search results, currently we do not offer image, news or any other types of search result. Leta acts as a proxy to Google and Brave search results. You can select which backend search engine you wish to use from the homepage of Leta.
Can I use Leta as my default search engine?
Yes, so long as your browser supports changing default search engines.
Navigate to https://leta.mullvad.net in your browser and right-click on the URL bar.
From there you should see Add “Mullvad Leta“ with the Mullvad VPN logo to the left.
If you do not see this, you can attempt to add a custom search engine to your browser with:
- The name set to: Leta
- The URL set to: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s
You can select which backend engine to use as follows:
- Google: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s&engine=google
- Brave: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s&engine=brave
Did you make your own search engine from scratch?
We did not, we made a front end to the Google and Brave Search APIs.
Our search engine performs the searches on behalf of our users. This means that rather than using Google or Brave Search directly, our Leta server makes the requests.
Searching by proxy in other words.
What is the point of Leta?
Leta aims to present a reliable and trustworthy way of searching privately on the internet.
However, Leta is useless as a service if you use the perfect non-logging VPN, a privacy focussed DNS service, a web browser that resists fingerprinting, and correlation attacks from global actors. Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies.
For most people Leta can be useful, as the above conditions cannot ever truly be met by systems that are available today.
What is a cached search?
We store every search in a RAM based cache storage (Redis), which is removed after it reaches over 30 days in age.
Cached searches are fetched from this storage, which means we return a result that can be from 0 to 30 days old. It may be the case that no other user has searched for something during the time that you search, which means you would be shown a stale result.
What happens to everything I search for?
Your searches are performed by proxy, it is the Leta server that makes calls to the Google or Brave Search API.
Each search that has not already been cached is saved in RAM for 30 days. The idea is that the more searches performed, the larger and more substantial the cached results become, therefore aiding with privacy.
All searches will be stored hashed with a secret in a cache. When you perform a search the cache will be checked first, before determining whether a direct call to Google or Brave Search should be made. Each time the Leta application is restarted (due to an upgrade, or new version) server side, a new secret hash is generated, meaning that all previous search queries are no longer visible to Leta
What could potentially be a unique search would become something that many other users would also search for.
What is running on the server side?
We run the Leta servers on STBooted RAM only servers, the same as our VPN servers. These servers run the latest Ubuntu LTS, with our own stripped down custom Mullvad VPN kernel which we tune in-house to remove anything unnecessary for the running system.
The cached search results are stored in an in-memory Redis key / value store.
The Leta service is a NodeJS based application that proxies requests to Google or Brave Search, or returns them from cache.
We gather metrics relating to the number of cached searches, vs direct searches, solely to understand the value of our service.
Additionally we gather information about CPU usage, RAM usage and other such information to keep the service running smoothly.
I don't like how it tells you when the results were cached. You can tell if and when a query was searched for by someone else.
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I don't like how it tells you when the results were cached. You can tell if and when a query was searched for by someone else.
I do like it because when I'm trying to find out more information about break8ng events I want to know if I'm getting outdated information. Also, knowing that someone, somewhere in the world entered the same search terms as you within the last 30 days tells you absolutely nothing about that person.
-
At launch, access to Mullvad Leta was restricted to users with a paid Mullvad VPN account, but it is now free and open to all.
Mullvad Leta has been audited by Assured.
Just a heads up, some of the details in the FAQ and Terms of Service seem a bit outdated and might not be accurate anymore.
Some relevant information from their FAQ section is as follows:
What can I do with Leta?
Leta is a search engine. You can use it to return search results from many locations. We provide text search results, currently we do not offer image, news or any other types of search result. Leta acts as a proxy to Google and Brave search results. You can select which backend search engine you wish to use from the homepage of Leta.
Can I use Leta as my default search engine?
Yes, so long as your browser supports changing default search engines.
Navigate to https://leta.mullvad.net in your browser and right-click on the URL bar.
From there you should see Add “Mullvad Leta“ with the Mullvad VPN logo to the left.
If you do not see this, you can attempt to add a custom search engine to your browser with:
- The name set to: Leta
- The URL set to: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s
You can select which backend engine to use as follows:
- Google: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s&engine=google
- Brave: https://leta.mullvad.net/?q=%s&engine=brave
Did you make your own search engine from scratch?
We did not, we made a front end to the Google and Brave Search APIs.
Our search engine performs the searches on behalf of our users. This means that rather than using Google or Brave Search directly, our Leta server makes the requests.
Searching by proxy in other words.
What is the point of Leta?
Leta aims to present a reliable and trustworthy way of searching privately on the internet.
However, Leta is useless as a service if you use the perfect non-logging VPN, a privacy focussed DNS service, a web browser that resists fingerprinting, and correlation attacks from global actors. Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies.
For most people Leta can be useful, as the above conditions cannot ever truly be met by systems that are available today.
What is a cached search?
We store every search in a RAM based cache storage (Redis), which is removed after it reaches over 30 days in age.
Cached searches are fetched from this storage, which means we return a result that can be from 0 to 30 days old. It may be the case that no other user has searched for something during the time that you search, which means you would be shown a stale result.
What happens to everything I search for?
Your searches are performed by proxy, it is the Leta server that makes calls to the Google or Brave Search API.
Each search that has not already been cached is saved in RAM for 30 days. The idea is that the more searches performed, the larger and more substantial the cached results become, therefore aiding with privacy.
All searches will be stored hashed with a secret in a cache. When you perform a search the cache will be checked first, before determining whether a direct call to Google or Brave Search should be made. Each time the Leta application is restarted (due to an upgrade, or new version) server side, a new secret hash is generated, meaning that all previous search queries are no longer visible to Leta
What could potentially be a unique search would become something that many other users would also search for.
What is running on the server side?
We run the Leta servers on STBooted RAM only servers, the same as our VPN servers. These servers run the latest Ubuntu LTS, with our own stripped down custom Mullvad VPN kernel which we tune in-house to remove anything unnecessary for the running system.
The cached search results are stored in an in-memory Redis key / value store.
The Leta service is a NodeJS based application that proxies requests to Google or Brave Search, or returns them from cache.
We gather metrics relating to the number of cached searches, vs direct searches, solely to understand the value of our service.
Additionally we gather information about CPU usage, RAM usage and other such information to keep the service running smoothly.
I wonder if they're using the (paid) Google and Brave APIs, and are running Leta as a loss leader, or if they have some way to get around it
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I do like it because when I'm trying to find out more information about break8ng events I want to know if I'm getting outdated information. Also, knowing that someone, somewhere in the world entered the same search terms as you within the last 30 days tells you absolutely nothing about that person.
Unless the terms include a name or location. Plus Leta is not widely used.
Suppose you tell someone in secret that you were arrested. You know they use Leta, so you look up "John Doe arrest" later and see that it was just recently cached. You only told one person so it must have been them. You now know what someone searched because they used Leta.
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I wonder if they're using the (paid) Google and Brave APIs, and are running Leta as a loss leader, or if they have some way to get around it
Surely it has to be the paid APIs. You can't build a service hoping Google won't notice your bots running searches.
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Honest question: how can it be better to search Google through a proxy than using Google? You're still feeding the beast?
Searx can provide a much better experience.
For example, on the instance I'm using if a search result is a Google thread, the link will direct you to a redlib reddit proxy.
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Surely it has to be the paid APIs. You can't build a service hoping Google won't notice your bots running searches.
I guess you would need a lot of proxies. And they probably need to be on Googles good side to keep their VPN extension in Chrome
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I guess you would need a lot of proxies. And they probably need to be on Googles good side to keep their VPN extension in Chrome
I guess you would need a lot of proxies
