How are they private though? Unless they relay your search it is the exact opposite of private.
> SearXNG protects the privacy of its users in multiple ways regardless of the type of the instance (private, public). Removal of private data from search requests comes in three forms:
> 1. removal of private data from requests going to search services
> 2. not forwarding anything from a third party services through search services (e.g. advertisement)
> 3. removal of private data from requests going to the result pages
From: https://docs.searxng.org/own-instance.html#how-does-searxng-...
The docs mention a caveat below at "What are the consequences of using public instances?":
> If someone uses a public instance, they have to trust the administrator of that instance. This means that the user of the public instance does not know whether their requests are logged, aggregated and sent or sold to a third party.
a proxy (or proxies) and how they can shield but one or many of ' your' IP addresses throughout an egress packet's many hops (and from who or what destination it or those addresses can be shielded) is a pretty advanced concept when you think about it.
not to mention that, at this point, bare source IP address is a pretty dilute tracker compared to other current methods of identity profiling or traffic fingerprinting.
nice succint correction on your part regardless.
a few examples of a self-hosted design that would not, include policy-based routing over a VPN with one or multiple tunneled hops, or through another external proxy. (and then there's also that 'onion' routing 'protocol' there—but i'm not clear if/how that integrates with clearnet destinations like publicly-accessible search engines if at all.)
but the idea is not necessarily anonymity so much as privacy by foiling the creation of any even somewhat accurate marketing/data profile derived from 'your search.'