And that’s enough to make a lot of people (including us) uncomfortable. No one can see what you’re doing on those websites, but they can still see which sites you’re going to. Remember the big controversy over the NSA collecting cell phone metadata? This is sort of like that. They won’t be able to see what you type into the site, or what you do there, but just knowing which site you’re going to could be enough to make you a bit less secure. And if it is, someone snooping on your web traffic might be able to see the sites you’re going to, even if you’re using HTTPS or a VPN. There’s a problem, though: your query to the domain name server might be unencrypted.

All of this happens in the background, and you might not even knows it’s happening. Once your computer has the IP address, it can connect to the server where the site is hosted. The IP address is the actual location of the site. When you type a URL into your browser, like your computer gets in touch with a DNS server, and the server sends an IP address back. Why Your DNS Queries Should Be EncryptedĭNS stands for “domain name system,” and it servers a bit like the internet’s phone book. Let’s start with the basics, and then we’ll get to our recommendations. But is no longer working, and it might be time to find an alternative. And if you do know what this means, you probably know about DNSCrypt. If you have no idea what this means, don’t worry we’ll explain it for you.

Which is why we feel like we should warn you: there’s a potential vulnerability hiding in plain sight. Taking steps to hide your internet traffic from prying eyes is something that we’re passionate about here.

Opendns dnscrypt not working