Quad9: Is good?

[Archie1]

@mbod

@Dinomonster

What’s actually difference between DNS and VPN? Because I have no experience about DNS before this thread and the fact that I dug little bit about Quad9. How does it differ from VPN?

I’m not certain if I ever end up using one, but would like to know it’s benefits compared to VPN.

Just genuinely asking, because this is mystery to me

Lets start with spelling out the acronyms:

DNS = Domain Name Server
VPN = Virtual Private Network

A DNS translates host names into ip addresses. humans need host names to remember and use in URLs etc. But computers need ip addresses to send packages. hence, a server is needed to translate name to ip address, like google.com=142.250.184.238. Without DNS the internet does not work. DNS is a must have.

VPN is a network technology with which you can securely connect to computers. Normal internet packages travel through several other computers (routers) before they reach their destination. Each router could potentially look into the packages and see the data and eventually manipulate the data inside the packages. Malicious activity. To prevent that you can build up a VPN between your laptop/PC and your destination, e.g. the login server of your company. No router can look inside packages that you send through a VPN. Its a security feature. I would say that every company which offers home office to their employees also offers a VPN to connect the home office to the company network.

My two cents on this. Even if we use VPN and prevent to an extent intermediate routers peaking into packets, then also DNS server queries can still leak. A lot can be gleamed by just looking at the DNS queries even if the packets are encrypted. With other fingerprinting techniques, profiles can be generated with a surprising level of accuracy. Using VPN + Google DNS or VPN + Cloudflare DNS is equal to figuring out what places an individual has been in a day but not knowing what the individual did in those places.

Maybe the best approach is to setup a personal DNS server. it should not be too hard and would not require cutting edge or costly hardware. And use the personal DNS server along with a VPN.

[mbod]

@Archie1

Can you please elaborate on how to switch off Firefox internal DNS resolving and switch to the systems DNS resolving?

You can set it to “off” in the firefox settings.

Or you create a user.js file in the firefox profile directory and add this line to it:

user_pref("network.trr.mode", 5);

This is how I do it.

Trusted Recursive Resolver - MozillaWiki

[vazicebon]

@Archie1

I did not know that this afflicts all the services hosted by Cloudflare when the request is made by people not using Cloudflare/Google DNS servers.

What I mean is, if a Cloudflare customer decide to use some Cloudflare service for their website, in your case, the “human verification security”, it will affect any person connecting to the said site, with Quad9 or anything else.