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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Firefox will start switching browser users to Cloudflare's encrypted-DNS service today and roll out the change across the United States in the coming weeks.
"Today, Firefox began the rollout of encrypted DNS over HTTPS (DoH) by default for US-based users," Firefox maker Mozilla said in an announcement scheduled to go live at this link Tuesday morning. "The rollout will continue over the next few weeks to confirm no major issues are discovered as this new protocol is enabled for Firefox's US-based users."
DNS over HTTPS helps keep eavesdroppers from seeing what DNS lookups your browser is making, potentially making it more difficult for Internet service providers or other third parties to monitor what websites you visit. As we've previously written, Mozilla's embrace of DNS over HTTPS is fueled in part by concerns about ISPs monitoring customers' Web usage. Mobile broadband providers were caught selling their customers' real-time location data to third parties, and Internet providers can use browsing history to deliver targeted ads.
Wireless and wired Internet providers are suing the state of Maine to stop a Web-browsing privacy law that would require ISPs to get customers' opt-in consent before using or sharing browsing history and other sensitive data. The telecom companies already convinced Congress and President Trump to eliminate a similar federal law in 2017.
Also at:
Mozilla Blog
The Register
Previously:
Firefox Begins Enabling DNS-over-HTTPS for Users
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:44PM (7 children)
Let's say for a moment that I don't like Cloudflare. Just as a hypothetical. Let's say I don't really care about who's monitoring my DNS. Let's say I realize that location tracking can happen whether my traffic is encrypted or not and that the real intelligence value in such data is tying location to location and the clustering of numbers together then watching how they disperse, not necessarily location to browsing. Let's say that the last entity in the universe I want having access to what DNS requests I make is fucking Cloudflare.
Can I turn it off and go back to the DNS provider I want? Easily?
Oh, and how will this fuck with the fact that I set my DNS resolvers manually and don't want my browser coming within ten fucking miles of my choice?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:56PM (2 children)
As explained by firefox. When the option is first enabled, you get a warning popup and the option to disable the feature. If you click without reading, you can go to about:config and set network.trr.mode to 0 or 5.
If you forget this, you can go to your preferred search engine and query with this string "disable firefox dns over https". The first link should take you to the page I used to find this information.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @09:23PM
In other words, it provides an initial option to do it easily. After that you require Google or specialized knowledge to make it happen.
So the default answer is No.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:16PM
Great, override in the options. Until they delete the option. Then you are stuck with this crap.
Oh, Firefox. Not chrome.
Never mind.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Booga1 on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:58PM (2 children)
Yes, you can turn it off. It's just a checkbox. Uncheck it and it goes back to how things normally work.
Yes, it's easy to change providers. NextDNS is already available in the menu and if you want something else, just click "Custom."
No worries about it messing with manual DNS resolvers either. The Firefox setting for this only controls Firefox. It's not like Internet Explorer where you can screw up your whole system because it pretends to be standalone while actually controlling the operating system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:16AM
That custom option could use a bootstrap IP field as well, so I don't have to open about:config for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:27PM
Yes, and chrome provided a checkbox to disable URL trimming. Which is now gone.
Maybe I should just fork a browser so I can put this option back in. ... ... ... Ha. Yes. That was sarcasm.
(Score: 5, Informative) by zocalo on Wednesday February 26 2020, @03:02PM
Yes, it's a setting in "General, Network Settings", or at least it is until Mozilla decides to simplify things and your only option is to go into "about:config". Provider options for me (Firefox 73.0.1) are "Cloudflare (Default)", "NextDNS", "Custom" (which lets you specify your own server(s)), or turning it off altogether. Keep in mind that this is an application level thing and as such operates completely independently of your OS settings, so if you use multiple applications that default to enabling DoH you'll need to disable it for each one individually if that's your preference - and keep checking to see if an update hasn't re-enabled it again as well.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!