What’s Next in Making Encrypted DNS-over-HTTPS the Default

It's a bad idea what it end up starting a cycle where every big application uses their own DNS. Some of them might not wven do it right

Because with Google you only have to trust one organization that flat out says in the FAQ that they do not "correlate or combine information from temporary or permanent logs with any personal information that [you] have provided Google for other services".

Quad9 is a conglomorate of "Threat Intelligence Partners" and three founding organizations: IBM, Packet Clearing House and Global Cyber Alliance https://www.quad9.net/about/ . What's that third one? I don't know, but it's founded by The City of London Police, NY District Attorney and the Center for Internet Security https://www.globalcyberalliance.org/who-we-are/ that third one is like a hundred "Partners", with such privacy champions as The US Secret Service. Over 100 organizations. What are their incentives? What role do all these organization play and how much access do they have? Who knows.

Compare their privacy policies. They're strikingly similar because Quad9 largely lifted theirs from Google's (I'm assuming, since theirs came later)

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy

https://www.quad9.net/policy/

Google's policy states they collect private information for 24-48 hours, keep "anonymized" information for 2 weeks and then randomly samples that data for permanent storage:

> Google Public DNS stores two sets of logs: temporary and permanent. The temporary logs store the full IP address of the machine you're using. We have to do this so that we can spot potentially bad things like DDoS attacks and so we can fix problems, such as particular domains not showing up for specific users.

> We delete these temporary logs within 24 to 48 hours.

> In the permanent logs, we don't keep personally identifiable information or IP information. We do keep some location information (at the city/metro level) so that we can conduct debugging, analyze abuse phenomena. After keeping this data for two weeks, we randomly sample a small subset for permanent storage.

Quad9 collects effectively the same information (except AS) as Google's 2 week logs and says

> All the above data may be kept in full or partial form in permanent archives.

If you want a game theoretic, capitalist analysis, Google has an incentive to keep the web running and keeping it an awesome platform, to make sure humanity's information is created and shared in an open format that they know how to index and that they can freely index, instead of apps or some alternative web or some other walled garden.

But we're bombarded daily with "goog bad" by politicians and journalists, so Google must obviously be just brazenly lying and you should give your DNS history to an organization founded by The City of London Police instead that "share anonymized data on specific domains queried [...] with its threat intelligence partners".

Please double check my work, I didn't read the privacy policies too carefully (I think notably Google stores the AS number and Quad9 doesn't) because I don't actually care, I (along with roughly 100% of internet users) just give all my DNS history in plain text to my ISP.

Here's a whitepaper that did some benchmarks and a detailed analysis on it. Was posted on hn a few days ago. https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.08089

They test various network conditions with some results showing DoH and DoT loading webpages faster than udp dns (due to tcp timing out faster than udp on lossy connections )

My history goes mostly to my carefully chosen, overseas VPN provider. Yes, there are no good choices, best you can do is to split your data between several parties, so its hard to correlate. Google has data on most people on the planet, unlike London Police, so giving Google your data is way more dangerous than other parties combined. And user data is Google primary business model.

And I wouldn't spend much time analysing policies, they are all "we pinky swear". Its is there a business incentive in using my data or not.

If you want privacy, use Tor. Like Richard Stallman https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

Anything else like a "VPN" (which is really just a proxy under a cooler name) is somewhere between a half measure, a snake oil hobby or self-sabotage (if you picked the wrong VPN).

You don't trust a large multi national that works on encryption and tries to deny frivolous law enforcement requests when it outright says it samples a small amount of "anonymized" data and doesn't correlate it with anything else it has on you or sell it

>> Is any of the information collected stored with my Google account?

> No.

>> Does Google share the information it collects from the Google Public DNS service with anyone outside Google?

> No, except in the limited circumstances described in Google's privacy policy, such as legal processes and enforceable governmental requests. (See also Google's Transparency Report on user data requests.)

>> Does Google correlate or combine information from temporary or permanent logs with any personal information that I have provided Google for other services?

> No.

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq

yet trust some small, anonymous group of people that set up a proxy that's netting them like $5/month of revenue per user in a highly competitive market?

> [policies] are all "we pinky swear"

Are they not legally binding? But yea, like I said, obviously they're just brazenly lying because of course they are. "goog bad" has been established. I'm not sure how or where... but everyone knows that.

Better be safe and give your data to an organization that lists the US Secret Service as a "Partner".