Every Android phone since Android 9 (Pie) and above has now a feature, called Private DNS. It has 3 possible options: Off, Custom and Automatic.
1. Off option is clear enough. Your phone uses the DNS server provided by your provider. Meaning, your provider can see what websites you open (if he wants). This should be the fastest option.
2. Custom option is also clear. You set a DNS of your choice. If you are afraid that your provider/government wants to track your browsing habits, you can input a third party DNS server (among popular choices are Google's public DNS servers or CloudFlare ones. That you only the third parties can actually track your browsing habits, so choose wisely.
3. Automatic options is the most interesting one. It is advertised as more secure, encrypted by TLS over DNS. However, your phone's OS is provided by Google. So when you use automatic, you are actually securing your DNS requests over TLS by encrypting them. This makes them invisible (or hard to see) for an external eye. However, this also means that you are sharing them with Google, because the servers it switches to when set to Automatic belongs to Google. So they are only telling you half of the truth.
Here is how to test your DNS settings. If you see a google DNS after scanning, then you are trusting Google. If you see your network provided DNS, then you trust the provider.
It is clear there is no best option here. But atleast now you knw the whole truth about Google's new option, called: Private DNS. It could be located on different places in your Android menu, but in my case it is located in Settings-> Connection sharing-> Private DNS.
Good luck and happy (and anonymous for most) browsing!
No comments:
Post a Comment