AS FAR as I’ve researched when it comes to being secure and keeping your data private, private, while browsing the internet is to be on a reliable VPN service. There’s a plenty of options out there to choose from. And I’ll leave that up to you if you choose the VPN route of being more secure. Just remember that getting a VPN service that’s truly secure and private can be a bit of expensive.
For many of us, a free option is so much more attractive. It’s only but a layer of security though but it’s better than nothing, if you ask me.
It’s called DNS over HTTPS or DoH. How does it work? Here’s an excerpt from a ZDNet article:
The protocol itself works by changing how DNS works. Until now, DNS queries were made in plaintext, from an app to a DNS server, using the DNS settings of the local operating system received from its network provider -- usually an internet service provider (ISP).
DoH changes this paradigm. DoH encrypts DNS queries, which are disguised as regular HTTPS traffic -- hence the DNS-over-HTTPS name. These DoH queries are sent to special DoH-capable DNS servers (called DoH resolvers), which resolve the DNS query inside a DoH request, and reply to the user, also in an encrypted manner.
Keep in mind though that this is not a silver bullet to keeping your data private when browsing online. What you post on Facebook for your friends (or all) to see is still something that can be seen. So if you’re the post-every-minute-of-your-life-on-social-media kind of person, it’ll be so much more harder to keep yourself private.
Anyway, coming back to DoH. As of this writing, you can now use and enable DoH in your favorite browser. On top of the list is Mozilla’s Firefox. DoH is pretty easy to turn on. It is to be expected because Mozilla is the one pushing for the adoption of DoH as a standard.
Mozilla Firefox - Go to Preferences > General > Network Settings > click on the checkbox that says Enable DNS over HTTPS.
Opera - opera://flags/opera-doh
Brave - brave://flags/#dns-over-https
Google Chrome - chrome://flags/#dns-over-https
Edge (Chromium version) - edge://flags/#dns-over-https
Except for Firefox, you’ll need to type in on the address the custom settings address for each browser. One note though is that, aside from Firefox, these other browsers don’t support DoH right off the bat. For the most part, they’re still just experimenting with it. Kinda like, dipping their feet in the water of DoH and not fully committing to it unlike Mozilla with Firefox.
If your browser doesn’t support DoH yet, check out the user forums of your browser. I’m sure somewhere, there is an answer as to whether DoH will be supported or not by your default browser.