When it comes to our privacy on the internet, we want to be safe and our data not to be leaked. That's why Mozilla has built tools for its browser, Firefox, with an emphasis on user privacy. One of these tools was announced last week and is called DNS over HTTPS, or DOH.
This technology combines the already existing DNS (domain name system), which is used to match an address with the IP of the server on which it is hosted, and the HTTPS protocol, which is the encrypted version of HTTP and is used to transfer data to and from the websites we visit.
When these 2 technologies are combined, malicious users such as hackers or scammers have no way of seeing what addresses you are trying to visit, so they cannot redirect you to fake websites, as any information transferred is encrypted.
“DNS is one of the most fundamental and oldest services on the Internet, and it remains largely unchanged to this day,” writes Patrick McManus, Mozilla’s chief technology officer. “In Firefox’s network and security team, we’re trying to change that by encrypting the DNS service and testing a service that prevents DNS providers from collecting and sharing your browsing history. That’s how we built DOH.”
Firefox does not use the service by default. Therefore, Mozilla has published a guide on how to configure it, and it requires using Firefox version 62 or later.
