Apple and Cloudflare Create New Protocol to Close Blind Spot in Internet Privacy Measures

Sieeka Khan, Tech Times 09 December 2020, 04:12 am

Cloudflare teamed up with Apple to develop a new DNS standard that is designed to help strengthen internet privacy measures. The protocol is named Oblivious DNS over HTTPS or ODoH.

The new DNS is meant to help anonymize the information that is being sent before a user make it onto a website. This can help a user with their overall net privacy.

What Cloudflare added to regular DNS

DNS lets people use the web without having to remember the IP address of every website that a user wants to visit.

While people can just understand the basic names of the site such as "YouTube.com" or "Facebook,com", computers use UP addresses that consists of numbers to route their requests across the internet.

DNS helps translate the website's name to the IP address so that your computer can understand and run the website. The DNS server will then send the translation back and your computer can load the website that you are looking for, according to TechCrunch.

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If you are particular about privacy, you may have noticed that this type of system informs whoever runs the DNS server about the websites that you are visiting. It is your computer's ISP running that server and there is nothing stopping the ISP from selling the data to advertisers.

This loophole in the system is what Cloudflare wants to solve with ODoH. The problem with the protocol is that it introduces a proxy server between you and the DNS server and the proxy will act as a go-between, thus sending your requests to the DNS server and it will deliver its responses back without letting it know who requested the data.

Introducing a proxy server is just the tip of the iceberg, because if it has the request and it knows that you sent it, there is a possibility that it can make its own log of sites that you have visited.

That is where the Cloudflare's DNS comes in. The DNS over HTTPS is a standard that has been around for years but it is not widely used. It uses encryption to make sure that only the DNS server can rea your requests and nothing else.

By using DNS over HTTPS, routing it through a proxy server will give you a proxy server that can't read the request and a DNS server that can't tell where it came from, thus making all of your searches private and your information secure.

Keep in mind that DNS server won't be able to keep a log of the sites that you are visiting, but if you are hoping to hide your browsing information from your ISP, ODoH probably won't be enough. ISPs will still route all of your other traffic, so hiding your DNS may not keep them from building your profile.

Staying private online can't be achieved by just one tool, but the ODoH is a brick that is added to the online privacy wall and it can be a precaution once it is available. .

Apple partners up with Cloudflare

Due to its promising result, engineers at Apple partnered up with Cloudflare to create Oblivious DNS, according to The Verge.

Cloudflare, Apple and their partners PCCW Global, Surf and Equinix already launched Oblivious DNS and the test clients have been open-sourced in order to allow interested consumers to test it out themselves.

Although the testing has begun, it will take some time before it becomes widely available. Despite Apple being involved, it does not guarantee that it will be compatible in iOS, macOS or Safari immediately.

The new DNS needs to be certified as a standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force, accoridng to Apple Insider.