Abstract
Risks regarding Internet privacy and security have been identified as issues for both new and experienced users of Internet technology. This paper explores the privacy and security threats in centralized search engines and proposes a decentralized search system. The proposed decentralized search system provides privacy and security for its users. The decentralized nature also provides transparency, distributed search and community-driven decisions in the proposed framework. We compare the proposed framework with the existing centralized approach. Our analysis shows that (1) there is no significant difference in search time between the centralized and proposed framework, and (2) the proposed framework is more efficient by providing search results with fewer search resources compared to the centralized approach.
Highlights
Google is responsible for 77 percent of searches worldwide
After the 18-month investigation into the impacts of Google and Facebook on the country’s economy, the Australian Government released a new report, which suggested that Google and Facebook need to reveal their secretive algorithms to operate in Australia
CONTRIBUTIONS The main contributions of this paper are as follows: 1) We propose the first framework to decentralize a search engine using distributed ledger technology and provide anonymity to its users using onion routing
Summary
The way Google displays information, and the way Google’s search algorithm works, have a powerful impact on the way we view the world. Google uses thousands of factors in its search algorithm. Even the world’s leading reverse engineers have not determined all of these factors, or figured out how Google’s constantly changing search algorithm works. This lack of transparency is frustrating for content creators. 2) Google can track our privacy - what we search for is most likely related to our daily lives. 3) On a political-point-of-view, if a specific search engine has a great impact, biased results may lead to harmful democratic politics [3].
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