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Looking at this thread, I don't really get why this feature it's so desirable.
I'm not saying that it's not useful, or it's not doable, or valuable. But l don't understand why so many of us are voting for this specific feature and write strong comments: I'm not criticizing anyone...it's only that I don't understand.

  • are we worried by be identified from a third party, that in this way can know that we are a Kagi user? This is a real "threat", but: is it an important one?

NoGoogle I trust Kagi far more then Google to do the right thing but many of us who seek a private search engine would like to maintain our anonymity as much as we can when we can.

I also don't get that: are we searching a "private" search engine, where we look at Kagi? I'm only looking to quality result without search engine trackers. But how my searches relates to my payment in Kagi? I think in no absolute way.

yifipiyqou I would be happy to financially support Kagi. However, as NoGoogle laid out, hesitation lies with linking our financial information to our search provider. Currently, there is no reason to distrust your promises of privacy, but companies change and governments can compel companies to log data.

Here lies for me the main point: the trust in Kagi team.
All boils down to this, in my opinion:

  • if we trust them, then pay with a common payment provider is a no brainer (do we really use NO OTHER digital payment in our life other than crypto? I don't think so)
  • if we ... um trust them BUT ... then my question is: why are we trusting their search engine? They could be manipulating our searches, or secretely storing some quantity related to ourselves, and sell all my searches attached to my digital fingerprint to data providers. But really are we thinking this?
    Because, if we trust them (and we're paying a monthly fee..so we're trusting them, right?) paying with Stripe or someone else couldn't be a big issue, for now.
    (btw: add a crypto payment could be a good thing in the future...I'm just thinking about priority now)
        2 months later

        seventhwave

        I would like you to note that when I made my cryptocurrency wallet I did not have to put in my real name, address and all sort of stuff into that.

        Having a name is enough to kill the anonymity of a user(especially when it is confirmed to be real via a credit card). But with cryptocurrency I can trade for goods without sacrificing my personal details. I have nothing to say against Kagi but yes, companies can change.

        Just saying, I would start paying for Kagi again with anonymous payments enabled. Right now I use SearX but that doesn't have the proper speed of Kagi and only works when I'm home.

        • Vlad replied to this.
            6 days later

            insomnia-creator I am curious what prevents you from using a an anoymous email (like simplelogin) and anoynomous credit card (like privacyhq)?

                11 days later

                Vlad It seems that privacyHQ is not available outside the US. There will always be countries where some of these will not be supported.

                • STM likes this.

                  Lot's of websites these days don't necessarily understand cryptocurrency's all that well but do still see the potential value that they can bring which has led to various companies creating plugins for businesses that want to accept cryptocurrency's as another payment source but don't necessarily want to go though the hassle of understanding it all/exchange rates.

                  These are some of the more popular names in the crypto space I keep coming across but you'll want to spend some time looking into how credible they are considering the amount of high profiles scams in this space:
                  Commerce.coinbase.com
                  Bitpay.com/business

                  Monero is the most popular private cryptocurrency in existence right now and the developers have set up a plugin just for accepting Monero only: https://monerointegrations.com/

                  Showing these links mostly to show that there is a market segment targeting business that want to quickly easily and painlessly accept crypto but without it's hassles. Many will even convert the crypto back into USD automatically.

                    2 months later

                    Kai One way around some of the anonymity of the public bitcoin blockchain would be to do the transfer over the Lightning network. There are simple ways for Kagi to do this themselves, including things like BTCPay Server which works onchain and over Lightning. A commercial version would be to use something like Opennode, which would integrate into the site and charges Kagi a 1% fee to convert BTC (onchain or over Lightning) back into USD. Free transfer to bank account then. Or, you can forego the conversion fee and just hold the payments as BTC as well.

                    Credit card companies charge over 1% for their fees so you'd save money in the long run using something like Opennode even if you do convert it back to USD.

                        a month later
                        2 months later

                        As a privacy-oriented search engine, I feel that the lack of an anonymous method of payment is Kagi's biggest weakness. I have spoken with people who would be willing to pay for a search engine, but don't want to pay for Kagi because it means all their searches can technically be associated with their real-life identity. And while we know Kagi doesn't need to track their users to keep the business going because they're getting money directly from them, the fact that it is still possible should still be a cause of concern. In an ideal world, we shouldn't have to trust the companies, whose services we use, to not misuse the information they get about us.

                        Now I will attempt to address some of the counter-arguments I have seen in this thread:

                        • Cryptocurrency is not actually private
                          Bitcoin most definitely isn't private, the only reason it is still used is because it is the original cryptocurrency that everyone knows. I recommend using Monero instead, which is pretty much the only cryptocurrency that is used for payment on the internet aside from Bitcoin, and that is not because it has a big name but because it is actually a private cryptocurrency.

                        • Not many people will actually purchase using cryptocurrencies
                          While this is true, I still think it is important that it is implemented, because it gives the user the option to remain completely anonymous if they want, instead of being forced to disclose their personal details in order to use the service. While I'd definitely be one of the few who pays with cryptocurrency, even if I weren't, I'd still rather give my information to a company who gives me the option to remain anonymous than one that doesn't, because it proves they actually care about privacy and anonymity.

                        • It will take a long time to implement
                          I still think it is worth it. To me, this is the single most important feature Kagi can implement right now, and I won't expect it to be out tomorrow - I'm fine with waiting for it.

                        Kagi is a great search engine because it is the fastest, the most costumizable, it has the highest quality of results, but it is not the most private. I hope that will change at some point.

                          Reimar

                          but it is not the most private

                          I am wondering which search engine you think is, and why?

                              15 days later

                              Vlad I am wondering which search engine you think is, and why?

                              For maximum privacy, I'd probably use Searx. What makes me trust this more than any other search engine is that it's free and open source and all instances are run by the community. It's a meta search engine so it returns all the results from Google/Bing etc. The reason I'm not a big fan of using it is because the results are usually not great, although they vary from instance to instance.

                              If Tor is an option, I think any of the Searx instances and normal privacy-oriented search engines (DuckDuckGo, Startpage etc.) that have an onion address are a great options as well. More private than the former, but also less convenient because of the slow speed.

                              • Vlad replied to this.
                                  4 days later

                                  Reimar

                                  It's a meta search engine so it returns all the results from Google/Bing etc

                                  How do you know what code does a searcx instance really run? Open-source does not guarantee that the same code is actually running on a server somewhere.

                                  And if you run your own isntance your are obviously directly contatcing google/bing so that is not privacy respecting either.

                                  This is only to say that the privacy is mostly a matter of business model, not code or anything else. So the question to ask is does Kagi have any incentive to disrespect your privacy (eg mine/monetize your data). The answer is no because people pay for Kagi with their wallet, not their data.

                                      Vlad Self-hosting a public instance and running through a VPN?

                                          Vlad

                                          So the question to ask is does Kagi have any incentive to disrespect your privacy (eg mine/monetize your data). The answer is no because people pay for Kagi with their wallet, not their data.

                                          I want to emphasize again that this isn't going to assuage people's privacy concerns. I'll also emphasize that I do believe you, and that Kagi is not currently harvesting or selling anyone's data, and that you have no intention to ever do so. I routinely trust private companies with data because they have a clear business strategy that allows them to make a profit off of actually selling their service and not their users. I do understand the point you're making.

                                          But the number of cases where a website or service has done a 180 flip on privacy for one reason or another in order to sell out their users is so numerous now as to practically be a cliche. There's a bunch of ways this could happen even if you personally never change your mind. What if someone legally takes over the company out of your control? What if a government forces you to? What if an employee goes rogue? What if you get hacked? What if someone makes an honest mistake and causes data to accidentally be leaked? All of these have happened to other companies.

                                          Privacy conscious people have learned from experience that the only way to avoid this is to avoid putting trust in companies altogether. And that's what we're asking you to allow us to do.

                                          The best way, and perhaps the only way, you can ensure that this won't happen is to not have access to that data in the first place, and to do so in a way that is plainly evident to your customers. If you provide a way of creating an anonymous but still paid for account using some method (be it cryptocurrencies or blind signature / zero-knowledge tokens or something else) then we don't need to trust you and take you at your word. There'd be no way for there to be data that could be leaked in the first place. And because search engine data is some of the most sensitive data of all — looking into someone's daily searches can potentially tell you more about them than even their email or financial records — it's that much more important that we be able to know that we're keeping our data under our own control without requiring any trust.

                                          • Vlad replied to this.
                                              2 months later

                                              Hi guys,
                                              I have the same privacy concerns as those expressed above, also towards crypto.
                                              Any progress on payment by cash? That would be great.
                                              Thanks!
                                              Tom

                                                Browsing6853 We have been in touch with them but it does look too enticing (15% comission too). Still looking it easiest crypto to usd API.

                                                    Following up on message above 🙂

                                                      Update: We have applied for a merchant account with BitPay which seems to have everything we need (apart from support for Monero but most other crypto is supported)

                                                        Anything about cash payments?

                                                        • Vlad replied to this.