Microsoft has added a privacy feature to Windows 11 called DNS-over-HTTPS, allowing users to perform encrypted DNS lookups to bypass censorship and Internet activity.
When connecting to a website or other host on the Internet, your computer must first query a domain name system (DNS) server for the IP address that is associated with the hostname.
DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) allows your computer to perform these DNS lookups over an encrypted HTTPS connection rather than through normal plain text DNS lookups, which ISPs and governments can snoop on.
As some governments and ISPs block connections to sites by monitoring a user’s DNS traffic, DoH will allow users to bypass censorship, prevent spoofing attacks, and increase privacy as their DNS requests cannot be as easily monitored.
Chromium-based browsers, such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox, have already added support for DoH. Still, it is only used in the browser and not by other applications running on the computer.
This is why it is helpful for an operating system to support the feature, as then all DNS lookups on the device will be encrypted.
Windows 11 gets DNS-over-HTTPS
Microsoft first released DNS-over-HTTPS to Windows Insiders for testing in Windows 10 preview build 20185, but they disabled it a few builds later.
With Windows 11, Microsoft has enabled the DoH feature again, and users can start testing it again if they are currently using DNS servers from Cloudflare, Google, or Quad9.
If the device is currently configured to use a Cloudflare, Google, or Quad9 DNS server, you can configure DNS-over-HTTPS using the following steps:
- Open the Windows 10 Settings app and go to Network & Internet.
- At the Network & Internet page, click on either Ethernet or Wireless depending on the network connection you have.
- You will now be at the Ethernet or Wireless options page, where you should click the Edit button next to DNS server assignment.
- If you are using a DNS server that is known to support DNS-over-HTTPS, you will see a new ‘Preferred DNS encryption’ option where you can enable DoH, as shown below. Information about the different preferred DNS encryption options can be found below.
- You can now press the Save button to enable DoH in Windows 11.
- Close the Settings app.
The preferred DNS encryption option offers the following choices:
- Unencrypted only – Use standard unencrypted DNS.
- Encrypted only (DNS over HTTPS) – Only use DoH servers.
- Encrypted preferred, unencrypted only – Try to use DoH servers, but if not available, fall back to standard unencrypted DNS.
At this time, Microsoft states that the following DNS servers are known to support DoH and can be used automatically by the Windows 11 DNS-over-HTTPS feature.
- Cloudflare: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 DNS servers
- Google: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.4 DNS servers
- Quad9: 9.9.9.9 and 149.112.112.112 DNS servers
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Technology Express staff and is published from a syndicated feed)
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