For years now, Firefox has been known as the company that makes “the People’s browser” – today, we have new reports about technology that Firefox is building into Mozilla, ostensibly to help protect a user’s privacy.
With its Homer-Simpson-esque acronym, DOH, or DNS over HTTPS, encrypts a DNS address to stop ISPs, government agencies and outside hackers from using your location and device data in illicit ways.
“DOH fits with a tech industry shift toward privacy that has been triggered by data breaches, digitalization of our lives and issues like Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal,” writes Stephen Shankland today at CNet in an article showing how Firefox plans to roll out the change. “Mozilla has long championed privacy, and Apple has made it a major priority. Even Google and Facebook, online advertising giants that make money by following you around the web, are trying to adjust.”
Shankland notes that Google’s Chrome team has expressed accolades toward this new service which comes in two flavors – Cloudflare and NextDNS, which both bar sales of DNS data by outside stakeholders.
However, critics say that DOH, in its own way, could just open up new avenues for spying. Shankland notes remarks by DNS expert Paul Vixie, and PowerDNS software creator Bert Hubert on concerns that DOH could centralize DNS activity, or that companies could use DOH itself for tracking.
Others have their own caveats.
“The (DOH) technology has faced fierce criticism from lawmakers and security experts who say that it hampers legitimate attempts by enterprise system administrators and lawmakers to block dangerous web content,” writes Jon Porter at The Verge. “Experts also claim the technology doesn’t provide the perfect privacy protection that its proponents claim. Only certain parts of the DNS lookup process are encrypted, and internet service providers will still be able to see which IP addresses their users are connecting to, they warn.”
Despite any skepticism, the Firefox play seems to be a very timely concession to the average user. Many of us are frustrated about the thin privacy expectations that we can have online, and Firefox is Mozilla innovation seems to be a step in the right direction.