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Old 15th April 2018, 04:52 PM   #1
SezMe
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1.1.1.1

I have a loose understanding of DNS and related concepts, with emphasis on "loose". I read this and this (both on the same topic) and am unclear what it means for me as an www consumer. What might it do for me, if anything.
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Old 15th April 2018, 05:15 PM   #2
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Skimmed through the info. It's a DNS service just like every other DNS service EXCEPT they promise not to track your IP. Also they claim to be really fast, but only real-world usage will attest to that.

Those are the two things they offer. As a consumer you can decide if either of those is important. As for speed, a DNS lookup occurs only when your browser sends a request to a new IP location, so it will have no effect on downloading, uploading, streaming, etc.
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Old 15th April 2018, 08:29 PM   #3
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Originally Posted by SezMe View Post
I have a loose understanding of DNS and related concepts, with emphasis on "loose". I read this and this (both on the same topic) and am unclear what it means for me as an www consumer. What might it do for me, if anything.
To boil it down, DNS changes www.website.com into an IP address. ISP's and some dns services track where you go in hopes of selling it. 1.1.1.1 is a cool service, I'd use it if I didn't run my own DNS at home. I use cloudflare for other things and they're a big name in net security.



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Old 15th April 2018, 11:33 PM   #4
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I'm still not clear on how I'd use it.
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Old 15th April 2018, 11:51 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by SezMe View Post
I'm still not clear on how I'd use it.
You use some DNS server every time you look at a different web page. It's just for a lot of people, the DNS server is run by their internet provider.

That's a good service for them to offer, but in that position they can do things like remember every site you look up and keep a log of when you did so.

If you trust the cloudflare folks and their stance more than your internet provider, you might tell your computer to use their server instead. On Windows, you just change the DNS setting in your network control panel and override it.
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Old 16th April 2018, 02:14 AM   #6
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OK, not that I don't think this sounds like really good idea, but the first thing that made me "suspicious" was that when I clicked the INSTALL button to go to the setup instructions it took me straight to the Windows instructions. That means they performed a "reverse DNS" to find which OS I was using.... that really goes against what they are advertising.
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Old 16th April 2018, 02:17 AM   #7
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If you don't want to be tracked why not just use Tor?
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Old 16th April 2018, 07:57 AM   #8
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
OK, not that I don't think this sounds like really good idea, but the first thing that made me "suspicious" was that when I clicked the INSTALL button to go to the setup instructions it took me straight to the Windows instructions. That means they performed a "reverse DNS" to find which OS I was using.... that really goes against what they are advertising.
It means their web server looked at the ID code (the User Agent String) your web browser sent to that server when requesting a web page, which includes your browser and OS (including version info) by default. Example:
Code:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/7B405
or
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
Your browser intentionally sends this info to all web servers it contacts.
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Old 16th April 2018, 08:00 AM   #9
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
OK, not that I don't think this sounds like really good idea, but the first thing that made me "suspicious" was that when I clicked the INSTALL button to go to the setup instructions it took me straight to the Windows instructions. That means they performed a "reverse DNS" to find which OS I was using.... that really goes against what they are advertising.
No, they didn't do a reverse DNS for that. Reverse DNS would not tell them what platform you're running.

When your browser fetches a web page, one of the "headers" it sends to the web server is "User Agent". The web server can use that to serve different pages for, e.g., a Firefox user or a Chrome user or an Internet Explorer user. (especially the last one was notorious for not adhering to the web standards and so they needed different style sheets to get the same effect).

The User Agent string a typical browser sends also includes the type of platform it's running on, so they can use that to determine whether you're using Windows, MacOS, Linux or something else.

And they did it wrong. I got the instructions for MacOS, while I'm running Linux.
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Old 16th April 2018, 08:10 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by SezMe View Post
I'm still not clear on how I'd use it.
Your computer doesn't know where www.internationalskeptics.com is on the web. So it has to ask someone for directions. But, the computers being asked only know where numeric addresses are, not names. So you have to ask someone what numeric address is used for that 'name' you have. This someone is a Domain Name Server, which is identified by a numeric address.

It's like asking where "Joe's bakery" is, but nobody knows. You then look it up in the phonebook and find out it's at 123 Fake St. Then you can ask people on the street where 123 Fake Street is, and they can point you in the right direction, even if they don't know there's even a bakery in town.

So, your computer has, in it's network settings, a note remembering where that "name to number' lookup book is. By default it probably uses whatever your ISP wants you to use. But you can change it to something like 8.8.8.8 to use Google's lookup, or you can change it to these guys. As it's already a number address, your computer can find it from anywhere to use it's service.

The 'problem': when you ask the 'phonebook' on the internet, it *might* keep a recording of you asking for www.howtomakebombs.net or www.ineedtoenlargemytool.org or something embarrassing. These guys promise to never, ever, not-for-a-billion-dollars, do that, honest, pinky swear.
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Old 16th April 2018, 09:30 AM   #11
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Another thing is that you can use it to avoid the more primitive form of censorship when you are in an eight star country. Some tend to give the national providers lists of addresses they aren't allowed to translate to their customers. Maybe because they don't like Joe's bread or something.

So with this, you simply ask out of country and they will have heard of Joe.

Good that there's an easy to remember alternative to google's service, as one really doesn't want to give that behemoth even more data.

I tried it and it's clearly slower than my ISP's DNS service, so the only reason why I would want to use it doesn't apply.

Last edited by Childlike Empress; 16th April 2018 at 09:32 AM.
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Old 16th April 2018, 10:35 AM   #12
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
OK, not that I don't think this sounds like really good idea, but the first thing that made me "suspicious" was that when I clicked the INSTALL button to go to the setup instructions it took me straight to the Windows instructions. That means they performed a "reverse DNS" to find which OS I was using.... that really goes against what they are advertising.
The probably didn't do a "reverse DNS". Most likely they simply used the "User agent" string in the http or https request sent by your browser. Like it or not, you announce your browser version and OS every time you access a web site.

Last edited by CORed; 16th April 2018 at 10:46 AM.
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Old 16th April 2018, 10:43 AM   #13
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I use Goolge's DNS rather than my ISP's, because my ISP redirects any request for an unresolvable domain (one it can't find an IP for) to a crappy little ad farm pretending to be a search engine, instead of complying with standards and returning a message that it can't resolve the name. This annoys me.

Goole's DNS does, i believe, track your requests to further their advertising empire (as they do with searches or just about any other interaction with their products). I don't care enough about that not to use their services, if they meet my needs, but if you are bothered by that this service is an alternative.
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Old 16th April 2018, 10:44 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by GodMark2 View Post
It means their web server looked at the ID code (the User Agent String) your web browser sent to that server when requesting a web page, which includes your browser and OS (including version info) by default. Example:
Code:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/7B405
or
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
Your browser intentionally sends this info to all web servers it contacts.
Indeed. If you ever wondered how a website that looks different on mobile browsers knows that you're on mobile, that is it.
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Old 16th April 2018, 12:43 PM   #15
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Originally Posted by CORed View Post
Goole's DNS does, i believe, track your requests to further their advertising empire (as they do with searches or just about any other interaction with their products). I don't care enough about that not to use their services, if they meet my needs, but if you are bothered by that this service is an alternative.

Thanks to the Patriot Act everything Google knows, the NSA knows as well, which is a bit more delicate than ad business. You just share more data in addition to all the other data these "services" already collect on you, making your "virtual you" even more defined. I avoid that as much as possible, not least out of principle.
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Old 17th April 2018, 07:39 AM   #16
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
OK, not that I don't think this sounds like really good idea, but the first thing that made me "suspicious" was that when I clicked the INSTALL button to go to the setup instructions it took me straight to the Windows instructions. That means they performed a "reverse DNS" to find which OS I was using.... that really goes against what they are advertising.
I'm curious: Where did you get this idea about reverse DNS?
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Old 17th April 2018, 09:30 AM   #17
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
OK, not that I don't think this sounds like really good idea, but the first thing that made me "suspicious" was that when I clicked the INSTALL button to go to the setup instructions it took me straight to the Windows instructions. That means they performed a "reverse DNS" to find which OS I was using.... that really goes against what they are advertising.


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Old 17th April 2018, 09:54 AM   #18
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
I'm curious: Where did you get this idea about reverse DNS?
Good question. A reverse DNS, as somebody actually mentioned, doesn't actually give that information. What it actually does, is, given an IP address, return the domain name(s) assigned to that address.
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Old 17th April 2018, 09:57 AM   #19
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Originally Posted by Childlike Empress View Post
Thanks to the Patriot Act everything Google knows, the NSA knows as well, which is a bit more delicate than ad business. You just share more data in addition to all the other data these "services" already collect on you, making your "virtual you" even more defined. I avoid that as much as possible, not least out of principle.
That's probably a little bit (but only a little bit) of an exaggeration. I won't say that I really like it, but I strongly suspect that any NSA agent looking at my information would be in serious danger of dying of boredom.
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Old 17th April 2018, 10:17 AM   #20
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Originally Posted by Captain_Swoop View Post
If you don't want to be tracked why not just use Tor?
Tor adds a lot of unavoidable overhead to your web requests especially latency and speed reduction. A DNS server with a privacy focus adds no latency or speed reduction.

BTW GRC has a nice tool to check the performance of your currently set and other DNS servers. https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

I found that the new 1.1.1.1 servers are significantly slower for me than my ISP's servers. In fact my ISP's servers are the fastest servers I can use.
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Old 17th April 2018, 10:43 AM   #21
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Why is there an install button? There shouldn't be anything to install. Or does that just go to instruction on how to change the setting?
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Old 17th April 2018, 10:49 AM   #22
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Originally Posted by CORed View Post
That's probably a little bit (but only a little bit) of an exaggeration. I won't say that I really like it, but I strongly suspect that any NSA agent looking at my information would be in serious danger of dying of boredom.

No, it's not an exaggeration, not even a little bit. Check the Snowden leaks if you don't believe that they are storing everything they can get their fingers on, simply because they can. While saying "don't worry, nobody's looking at your data", which is technically true unless it somehow gets interesting. Your classic "I've got nothing to hide" doesn't cut to the problem. Just imagine the person that wants to run for president in, say, 30 years, with a program that runs against the establishment politics. And the guys at the NSA have access to what this person did just now, in 2018, as a teenager doing silly maybe illegal things and having contact with people they shouldn't, like all teenagers do. And all they did between that and their run for president is an open book for the guys at the NSA. What kind of society would that be?

</preaching>
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Old 17th April 2018, 10:50 AM   #23
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Originally Posted by Finster View Post
Why is there an install button? There shouldn't be anything to install. Or does that just go to instruction on how to change the setting?

The latter.
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Old 17th April 2018, 10:59 AM   #24
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Originally Posted by Finster View Post
Why is there an install button? There shouldn't be anything to install. Or does that just go to instruction on how to change the setting?
My guess would be that the install button changes the settings for you. It's not necessary to install anyting if you know how to change the settings.
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Old 17th April 2018, 11:01 AM   #25
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Originally Posted by Childlike Empress View Post
No, it's not an exaggeration, not even a little bit. Check the Snowden leaks if you don't believe that they are storing everything they can get their fingers on, simply because they can. While saying "don't worry, nobody's looking at your data", which is technically true unless it somehow gets interesting. Your classic "I've got nothing to hide" doesn't cut to the problem. Just imagine the person that wants to run for president in, say, 30 years, with a program that runs against the establishment politics. And the guys at the NSA have access to what this person did just now, in 2018, as a teenager doing silly maybe illegal things and having contact with people they shouldn't, like all teenagers do. And all they did between that and their run for president is an open book for the guys at the NSA. What kind of society would that be?

</preaching>
You're preaching to the choir. I don't like the situation. I just find Google, and the internet in general, useful enough that I don't personally feel the need to go to the trouble to hide.

Last edited by CORed; 17th April 2018 at 11:18 AM.
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Old 17th April 2018, 11:07 AM   #26
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Originally Posted by paulhutch View Post
Tor adds a lot of unavoidable overhead to your web requests especially latency and speed reduction. A DNS server with a privacy focus adds no latency or speed reduction.
Good points. I have never use Tor myself but a friend who does tells me that search engines don't like it. Duckduckgo is OK , Yahoo works sometimes but it throws you on to a random countries version depending on your exit and Google won't even load.
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Old 17th April 2018, 11:21 AM   #27
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Originally Posted by paulhutch View Post
Tor adds a lot of unavoidable overhead to your web requests especially latency and speed reduction. A DNS server with a privacy focus adds no latency or speed reduction.
Potentially it can, though. If 1.1.1.1 can't maintain uptime and response time, they can add latency or even request failures to your requests.

Also, a DNS server doesn't provide even a fraction of the anonymity that Tor does.
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Old 17th April 2018, 05:40 PM   #28
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Originally Posted by CORed View Post
I strongly suspect that any NSA agent looking at my information would be in serious danger of dying of boredom.
That is why they try to make it more interesting by twisting an innocuous post on ISF to "inciting racial hatred".
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Old 19th April 2018, 10:12 AM   #29
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Potentially it can, though. If 1.1.1.1 can't maintain uptime and response time, they can add latency or even request failures to your requests.

Also, a DNS server doesn't provide even a fraction of the anonymity that Tor does.
If you're worried enough to use Tor's level of cover then you should really just run your own stuff.

In my personal opinion, Tor is a miserable solution. Again, totally my personal opinion, but the overhead gets me every time. I'm all about security. I encrypt internet traffic, I have notifications and warnings set on my firewall for any intrusion as it's internet facing, I block ads, etc at the WAN, etc., but if you want your traffic covered that much then there are plenty of other options without Tor's overhead.
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Old 19th April 2018, 10:43 AM   #30
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Originally Posted by plague311 View Post
If you're worried enough to use Tor's level of cover then you should really just run your own stuff.

In my personal opinion, Tor is a miserable solution. Again, totally my personal opinion, but the overhead gets me every time. I'm all about security. I encrypt internet traffic, I have notifications and warnings set on my firewall for any intrusion as it's internet facing, I block ads, etc at the WAN, etc., but if you want your traffic covered that much then there are plenty of other options without Tor's overhead.
But Tor is easy to use.

Even on your Android. Just load the Orbot and Orfox Browse Apps and away yo go.
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Old 19th April 2018, 01:57 PM   #31
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Originally Posted by Captain_Swoop View Post
But Tor is easy to use.

Even on your Android. Just load the Orbot and Orfox Browse Apps and away yo go.
I definitely won't argue with you there. I've never even bothered to secure my cell phone outside of normal measures. I use google chrome to navigate, and so on.

I'm probably a terrible example though because I have no fear of being monitored, and while I love my privacy I'm not aggressive about it. I use a VPN that's always active on my cell that pushes through my pfsense at home, and my home network is about as secure as it can be within reason (I even use a physical and 2 virtual firewalls (though one is a vmware appliance)). I run my DNS at home with the DNS being discussed here as a secondary.
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