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from the and-everyone-else-on-the-network dept.
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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @12:29AM (1 child)
There will be no way to switch to preferred solution in... let's say 8-10 releases, but this is a loose assumption. The usual method in Mozilla is: First "we move preference to about:config". Next, "we delete this as there's add-on for it" and then "add-on is not supported anymore" finishing with "we shut down entire API so you cannot write such add-on even if you want". Deploying unfinished things is a problem in Mozilla, it was seen when they migrated from 3.6 to 4, when they killed half of API and told that there will be "Heuristics" for it (never finished), then when passing to Australis, then Quantum, all time API is unfinished and unstable. Essential features become added "right in the next release" when they flip the API inside out again. The manpower to keep maintaining plugins and themes becomes less and less in reach of normal users who program useful things and more in companies who gather more data. I do a small open source project. Not a popular one, but I just cannot imagine saying to users of my open source program thing like "re-write all your work from ground up" as I know some people built complex systems with it.
No, I don't entirely trust Mozilla (as any software), but I don't see Mozilla as an uniform software group (but it slowly becomes one). I see that there are initiatives to preserve privacy and to loose it, so there must be some groups with ideas for and against. I use customized forks, but when I use mainline Firefox I customize it too as out of the box it sends quite large amount of data and, especially, metadata which sufficiently replaces the data if captured. And for DNS-over-HTTPS there are numerous questions in the Net "how do I override the domain X not to be resolved" - without reply. Removing of security-important feature without giving any alternative and sticking head in sand pretending that problem does not exist is not a good idea.
And there were times that people were thinking about it and developed alternative solutions, usually ending with nonstandard TLDs resolved by specific servers. There were even some servers here and there for it as it was decentralized, but it finally shut down with smaller and smaller amount of diverse websites visited per users and made by users.
If someone has two ISPs to choose from, the best idea is to think what got wrong when there were more, but monopoly has been chosen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @11:41AM
The Decentraleyes guy rewrite his from the ground up after browser api changes. After first announcing he wouldn't. So many of us are grateful.