By first glance, you may be wary of using a search engine like mine. It's a good thing to be skeptical of websites and services before you proceed to use them. The problem is that most people do not hold this skepticism for popular services such as Google. There is a blind acceptence in using popular services simply because other people blindly adapt to using them as well. Therefore, if many people are using a service, that must mean it is good, correct?

Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, many free services (such as Google, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) rise to popularity due to them being free. The price you pay is your data. The easiest way to collect the most data is to offer a service for free. We simply click a button that says "I agree" to a Terms of Service box, and we're allowed to use their free service as long as we trade them our data.

As time progresses, it becomes more and more clear why collection of your data is risky, invasive, and wrong. You may initially think, "I have nothing to hide. I'm a boring person. I don't care if Google knows all of the things I search." Google is not a faceless entity. Google is only operational because there is a huge pool of employees -- people like you and me -- who run and make it function. These same humans have the ability to know everything you're searching. They know who you are, what you're searching, which websites you visit, they build secret profiles on you based on your habits and searches, and much more. Once we start considering just how much these people have access to, it's only natural to feel a little uneasy. We tend to search a lot of personal matters -- embarrassing medical questions, porn, personal issues, etc. Knowing that Google logs this information and sells it to third parties is embarrassing. Now not only does Google know everything about you; but whoever buys this information knows these details about you, too. Essentially, your information becomes free game to whoever wants to buy it. This only gets worse when we consider how data breachers are not a matter of "if" but WHEN. Things you once thought were private may now be completely accessible for the entire public to see.

This is why I say: As time progresses, it becomes more and more clear why collection of your data is risky, invasive, and wrong. You are doing nothing wrong by conducting searches. You do not need to be a bad person or need "something to hide" in order to find value in privacy. At the end of the day, your data should be yours.

The creation of Duke Search is a solution to this problem. I have been aware of the extensive invasive practices done by numerous popular companies such as Google for years. I have taken great interest in utilizing tools that do not rely on popular privacy-invading companies. There are plenty of solutions that exist, but many people lack awareness of these solutions. Even though they are aware of the problem, they do not know of the solution. Typically, solutions come in the form of open source software. "Open source" meaning the source code is freely available for anybody to inspect and see *what* the software is doing. We do NOT have this ability when you use proprietary services such as Google, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. This creates a division in trust. How can we trust Google, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. if we cannot look at their source code and know what they're doing? They have the source code to our lives, yet we cannot have the source code to their software. This is why open source software is superior for those who see value in privacy. You (and people much smarter than you) have the ability to look through the source code of "open source software" and determine what it's doing for yourself. Since the source code is freely available, it also allows you to take that source code and make your own software with that source code. Open source software is usually very community-driven, developers often times are volunteers who have a passion for helping the community, and these projects are released with the intention that others can take this source code and host their own version of the software.

DukeSearch utilizes open source software called 4get. 4get is software anyone can host themselves. To clarify, 4get is "self hosted open source software". I installed this software onto my server and now anyone who visits Duke Search can use my server to search the internet. 4get is a search engine agrgigator, meaning your search will query multiple existing search engines and provide results from those various search engines. To make this process private, you and your IP address is NOT pinging those servers. Instead, you go through my server's IP address, and my server conducts the search for you. This acts like a "man in the middle" to protect your privacy.

If you're smart, you will then ask the question, "So you must know what I'm searching then, correct?". I do not keep logs on my server for the searches conducted, as I firmly believe in privacy for internet users. Because of this, while I could technically have the ability to enable logging of web traffic, I do not do this. Unlike Google, I have no monetary benefit for scooping your data. Unlike Google, I have respect for users. When utilizing any public instance, you will have to trust the site admin to be true to their word. I have never compromised a user's privacy, I have never revealed IP addresses of users nor do I care to look for users' IP address unless I had to remove illegal content submitted by a user. Every single websit you visit will have your IP address -- this is simply how the internet functions. It's like trying to make a phone call without a phone number. It cannot work without you having a phone number. People tend to greatly overestimate how much an IP address reveals to small site owners such as myself. If you have privacy concerns over me or large companies seeing your IP address, I highly recommend utilizing a reputable VPN (not NordVPN) or using tor. Both of these will obscure your real IP address from site owners and large companies.

•The clear net allows you to access many different websites. Tor allows this too, but uses a different type of method and infrastructure to access websites.

•Certain websites are exlusive to tor for very good reasons. Tor offers anonymity on an infrastrucute level. Just becuase you use tor does not make you anonymous, as this is where things like "OPSEC" come into play. You can always de-anonymize yourself by the actions you take, e.g. saying, "Hi, I'm Steve Lastname. I'm 23 and I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm using the tor browser right now." Even though you are using tor, you have now identified yourself and therefore, are not anonymous anymore. However, generally speaking, if done correctly, tor offers anonymity due to how the tor network routes your connection to the end destination (a website) and the tools the tor browser offers (such as disabling Javascript), and of course, your duedilligance to not identiy yourself by revealing personal information as you use the interet on tor.

•Because the tor network is made up of many, many, various different computers (many which are ran by volunteers) which build and allow users to use tor, it is very hard for any government to "shut down" the tor network.

•Certain websites are exlusive to tor for very good reasons. Tor uses "onion" links, which have a longer, jumbled URL compared to website links you're used to seeing (such as Example.com). These onion links are not in control of anyone other than the website owner. This is different than traditional website domains, such as Example.com. Typically, there are many entities who have the ability to shut down a domain such as Example.com. This is not good if you want to use the internet free from censorship. Tor solves this problem with onion links, only accessible via the tor network. Onion links are not controlled by any entity other than the person who owns them (aka the website owner). This adds a great layer of confidence for internet users and webmasters alike, as using tor adds a great layer of reliability that is not available with the clearnet.

•If someone chooses to host their tor website on their own hardware, there is no upstream provider, such as a server provider, who can shut down the server itself. While hosting a server on your own hardware could come with great rammifications (identity wise) if something goes wrong, generally, if things proceed correctly, there is a very unlikely chance that your server will be shut down. This offers yet another layer of resiliiance to the tor infratructure that the clearnet is lacking.