#ombrelo — Public Fediverse posts

Disturbing news for #privacy enthusiasts: the most privacy-respecting search service in the world (#Ombrelo¹) has permanently closed their doors due to lack of support.

I am gutted. It’s another win for our top digital rights adversary (#Cloudflare).

¹ https://ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion/

@rzeta0 @Privacymatters
#DuckDuckGo is #PrivacyTheater:

http://techrights.org/2021/03/15/duckduckgo-in-2021/

Avoid #DDG.

The single most privacy-respecting search service is #Ombrelo:

https://ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion/

But note that it’s more of a nerd service for advanced users.

@hobbsc It’s unclear if you are saying Cloudflare is unavoidable for admins or for visitors. Either way, CF /is/ avoidable by both admins and users.

Still today ½ of all websites in the world prove that CF is avoidable w.r.t administration. Only lazy & incompetant admins use it.

For users it’s difficult to avoid CF but I have been doing so for years. First, you can use a search service that down-ranks all CF sites in the results (#Ombrelo):

https://ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion/

There are a variety of non-CF frontends for walled gardens like youtube, stackexchange, google translate, reddit, etc. When there is no front-end, you have archive.ORG and 12ft.io.

There are browser plugins that detect when you have clicked on a Cloudflare website which then automatically redirects you to the archive.org version. There are plugins that put a strikethrough on all CF links that appear on a webpage you render. So if you use a search service other than Ombrelo, you can still easily steer clear of them.

When I need to /interact/ with a CF pusher, I do so offline, which often means calling, faxing, emailing or writing paper letters. When a bank starts using CF to wall me off away from my money, I close the account and switch banks.

@CppGuy @marijn

@alex @SoniEx2

The only search service that I would give a green light to is #Ombrelo:
https://ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion/

Ombrelo is the only search service in the world that tags #Cloudflare sites in the results and pushes them down, and redirects them to the archive.org mirror.

@strypey @zeh @alcinnz

Indeed mojeek.com is not the only non-tech-giant #searchEngine (+crawler). From strypey’s mentions + some of my notes:

* #Mojeek ← does their own crawling
* #Metager.org ← does their own crawling
* #SearchMySite.net ← avoid (Cloudflare)
* #Searx ← just proxy software, many instances
* #4get ← another proxy software, about a dozen instances: https://4get.ca/instances
* #Gigablast ← does their own crawling, but what happened?.. they were dissolved last year & seem to now be www.alltheinternet.com
* #Ombrelo ← a proxy but more advanced than the others (filters/downranks Cloudflare sites)

#YaCy is notable because it’s a crawler that you can install and operate yourself. YaCy instances can be public-facing and they can also share indexes with each other fedi style apparently. Some Searx instances tap YaCy instances.

I would love to find a searx or 4get instance that rejects the tech giants, but aggregates from YaCy, mojeek, gigablast, metager, maginalia.nu, frogfind.com, & wiby.me.

And I would love it even more if it would make replacements:

* #StackExchange → #AnonymousOverflow
* #YouTube → #Invideous
* #Medium.com → scribe.rip
* #BBC → BBC’s onion site
* #NYTimes → New York Times’s onion site
* etc.

search.fabiomanganiello.com makes some of those replacements.

@mariyadelano I start by searching on #Ombrelo:

http://ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion/

That’s a privacy-respecting search service that filters out Cloudflare garbage. But still, the web is fully enshitified, so I control-click links that look relevent then I have to filter out more enshitified garbage by hitting control-pgdwn to cycle through the tabs and control-w on CAPTCHAs, popups, cookie walls, paywalls, etc. At that point, there is often nothing left, because the web is so enshitified now. So then I try these search services:

* search.marginalia.nu
* frogfind.com
* wiby.me

If I’m still short on info, I search:

* mojeek.co.uk
* search.fabiomanganiello.com

but of course that’s even broader and has more garbage to sort through.

We really need a time machine to take us back to the 90s. The closest thing we have to that is marginalia.nu and wiby.me.

@cashew @molly0xfff @mjgardner @deflarerOfClouds @ben One thing that helps is to use the #Ombrelo search service (http://ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion/) which down-ranks #Cloudflare websites from the results so you have a better chance of visiting pages that actually allow access.

Now if I open a dozen or so tabs for search results on a recipe using a search service (other than #Ombrelo), I get around ~2-3 usable pages. Because cooking sites are scared shitless that a robot might get their recipe -- which of course only a human fucking being would find useful.

PSA: #Ombrelo is #down.

@andybaio
Yes.

The #Yandex and #Metager search engine is foss, iwrc, so please get started, #techLayoffs folk.

:)

BTW in the meantime the CloudFlare-free search engine, #Ombrelo, that puts all sites that are cf'd at the bottom of the page with a red strikethrough, does a surpisingly good job of removing chaff. Litetally just by purging cf with '#CFDomains'.

@roach @ChrisPirillo There are several good reasons to ditch #DuckDuckGo here: http://techrights.org/2021/03/15/duckduckgo-in-2021/ If privacy is the goal, then I suggest #Ombrelo.

@nicfab That list should be expanded. They say “Removal of private data from search requests comes in three forms”, but they overlook the fact that search results often contain privacy-abusing links. Addition needed: 4. Filters privacy-abusing sites out of results (e.g. Cloudflare). #Ombrelo is an example of a search engine that does that.

@blacklight @thelinuxEXP Ombrelo saves me time because CF sites are treated as irrelevant. It still gives tor-hostile results though, so I have to go back & click on favicons to get mirrored versions of some sites. But #Ombrelo is the king of privacy respecting search because it knows the needs of the audience & no other search service has put user needs above Google & Microsoft.

@thelinuxEXP @blacklight My workflow is to click down the list and open ~4—10 tabs & then run through the junk & hit control-w on the dysfunctional/garbage sites to get down to 1 or 2 that are fit. The search service should be doing that for me. Why doesn’t it? It’s because privacy seekers are in such a minority that no search service (except #Ombrelo) is willing to serve such a small audience.

@dsfgs @frankie @csddumi I never tried to find the #Ombrelo source code but if it’s ever pointed out to me I will be sure to preserve a copy. Supposedly there’s a path to it from the umbrella icon. The clearnet site is not reliable. Sometimes it’s deliberate (to get people on Tor) & sometimes I think they cut costs by bringing it down.

@csddumi @frankie

BTW @koherecoWatchdog,

You mentioned #Ombrelo Search. We love it too but recently we've not been able to find a clearnet address. We don't care about the clearnet one bit, but it helped us to talk about it, and redirect to the long and painful-to-type #HSv3 address. Maybe we will have to sit down and type the HSv3.

@frankie @csddumi There is only 1 search service that filters Cloudflare sites from the top results: #Ombrelo. And indeed I would ditch DDG. See http://techrights.org/2021/03/15/duckduckgo-in-2021/

@PublicLewdness #Ombrelo is what I had in mind, but searx instances are good too.

Dear #Searx admins- plz consider filling the hole that #Ombrelo left. It’s always a bad state of affairs when only one search service in the world has managed to filter out #Cloudflare sites. When privacy catalog sites constantly pimp bad options like #DDG, it lowers the goal posts so search admins tend not to even think of how to advance privacy-respecting #search.

The world’s most #privacy-respecting search service (#ombrelo) has been taken offline indefinately. Really bad news for privacy enthusiasts! API is still up but probably not many people even knew it existed much less how to use it.

@stefan @publicvoit #ombrelo→ ombrelo.pkduaxfk6lrmo2be4yr6ke5pqzsujihywsggfb7tocnz7x3vqqkhfoqd.onion