Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 04 2019, @08:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-dare-anyone-lie-to-congress dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Mozilla is urging Congress to reject the broadband industry's lobbying campaign against encrypted DNS in Firefox and Chrome.

The Internet providers' fight against this privacy feature raises questions about how they use broadband customers' Web-browsing data, Mozilla wrote in a letter sent today to the chairs and ranking members of three House of Representatives committees. Mozilla also said that Internet providers have been giving inaccurate information to lawmakers and urged Congress to "publicly probe current ISP data collection and use policies."

DNS over HTTPS helps keep eavesdroppers from seeing what DNS lookups your browser is making. This can make it more difficult for ISPs or other third parties to monitor what websites you visit.

"Unsurprisingly, our work on DoH [DNS over HTTPS] has prompted a campaign to forestall these privacy and security protections, as demonstrated by the recent letter to Congress from major telecommunications associations. That letter contained a number of factual inaccuracies," Mozilla Senior Director of Trust and Security Marshall Erwin wrote.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday November 05 2019, @12:00AM (8 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @12:00AM (#916036) Journal

    Now might be a good time to find the IP addresses of the sites you like, write them into /etc/hosts or somewhere similar, and start preparing a switch away from the mozilla/alphabet ecosystem.

    Yeah, it sucks. The most popular browsers are getting systemd'd more or less. And no, Midori and Falkon and company aren't up to feature parity yet. But this may be the impetus we need to get them there, or even better, get them to a *better-featured* state, one that does what the user wants, not what some giant company wants. This is what F/OSS is supposed to be for.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @12:21AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @12:21AM (#916043)

    Ironically falling back to 8.8.8.8 when DNS was misconfigured was one of the first things that put systemd-bad on my radar.

    In their case I think they genuinely did it to provide a reliable fallback in the case of a system administration error.

    Then they WONTFIXEd all the privacy complaints from sysadmins.

    It seems all roads lead to Rome Chrome these days.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday November 05 2019, @01:00AM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @01:00AM (#916060) Journal

      ...Jesus. I had no idea. SystemD is an endless labyrinth of horrors isn't it? Like a fucking Lament Configuration of a program.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday November 05 2019, @03:20AM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @03:20AM (#916103) Journal

        SystemD is an endless labyrinth of horrors isn't it?

        It's the only way to get emacs.service

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:42AM (3 children)

    by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:42AM (#916144) Homepage Journal

    Now might be a good time to find the IP addresses of the sites you like, write them into /etc/hosts or somewhere similar

    Will Chrome or Firefox even use the hosts file? Good question.

    --
    jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 06 2019, @06:28PM (2 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 06 2019, @06:28PM (#916894) Journal

      Hmmmm. That question makes me wonder if you know how hosts files work. The application in use doesn't 'use' the hosts file. The application, let's say Firefox, tells your network that it wants to talk to blah-blah IP address. Your network does whatever you have configured it to do - check the hosts file, or not, use this proxy or not, use that proxy or not, use a VPN, or not. Firefox doesn't know anything about your network. Unless there are any addresses hard coded into the application, it only knows how to talk to your computer's network interface.

      But, you know all of that, right? So - the purpose of your comment is to make us think? Hmmmmm. Oh-kay, I'm thinking. We already know that Microsoft has hardcoded addresses into it's new operating systems. Windows update and windows telemetry isn't going to be blocked by a simple hosts file, unless that file is on the router. So, maybe. I can see Chrome hard coding addresses into it's browser. I suppose that Firefox might follow suit one day, for reasons. Both of them may hard sell the concept as a safety feature. "If your network is corrupted, Firefox can still help you to log into your xxxxx.xxx account for support."

      Whether you maintain your blocked sites list and/or hosts file manually, or with a script, those blocks really should be on your router, not on your daily driver computer(s).

      • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:25AM (1 child)

        by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:25AM (#917143) Homepage Journal

        I know how hosts files work. I understand how DNS works (you sounded insulting BTW).

        So, maybe. I can see Chrome hard coding addresses into it's browser.

        That was my whole point.

        --
        jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:52AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:52AM (#916157) Homepage

    Nothing stops you from running your own recursive resolver, except either a lack of technical knowledge (but then why are you commenting on things which you are ignorant about?) or a motive to spread FUD.

    Just because one browser locks in DoH by default (Chrome only enables it if your DNS is already set to the same as a whitelisted DoH provider). is no reason to panic about DNS.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!