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Comment by esafak | Hacker News Reader

Mods: Consider adding to the title: A privacy focused search engine

I quoted their FAQ; it's not editorializing: https://leta.mullvad.net/faq

Right, one that by my understanding “pools” searches, in a way. As their blog put it in 2023:

“Mullvad Leta uses the Google Search API as a proxy, caching each search. These cached results are shared amongst all users, reducing costs and improving privacy. This service is user-supported and doesn't rely on ads or data selling.”

I thought the google search and bing API terms explicitly forbade you from caching the results for more than a short period of time

exactly to stop people doing this

That short period of time is likely to pool a group of users. Even if not, using Mullvad as a personal proxy for Google is a better privacy-conscious decision than using Google directly.

Just call it AI and there are no rules.

I'm curious doesn't outright say whether personal data is logged or kept? Like with the hashed original search or even separately.

The FAQ also mentions user changeable settings for freshness, can't see that.

Still very kind of them :)

It seems like the Google Search API quotas would be a problem, unless they have some special deal with Google.

I did add that description but seems like it was edited by mods.

I presume that's because calling it privacy-focused is considered editorializing. I'd at least hope it can have "(search engine)" or similar because I had no idea what it was before clicking.

Yeah. I usually stick to original titles and don't editorialize them, except when the title itself does not make it obvious what it is about.

I had assumed it was Mullvad announcing their own LLM.

> Mods: Consider adding to the title: A privacy focused search engine

@dang No - please don't do it. This request is plain stupid.

Apple and Google being "privacy-focused" is a silly buzz-phrase at this point. Mullvad is tied to Alphabet/Google.

EDIT (2025 05 28 16:45 UTC): great to see how my recent comments were raided <3

Who the fuck have I annoyed? :)

The request is just to add context to the title. The perceived veracity of that title isn't really important, if they decided to call themselves that.

BTW what ties are you talking about? Is there a source for that claim?

> plain stupid

You broke the site guideline against calling names, at least.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair. I apologize for my poor choice of words. I however stand by my point in general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com