Yes, you hae to ask the tld's server for the NS record - the delegated domain's authoritative server. That's one request that usually has a much longer TTL. I'v

Yes, you hae to ask the tld's server for the NS record - the delegated domain's authoritative server. That's one request that usually has a much longer TTL. I've seen TTLs of multiple days or even weeks for NS records, compared to 5 minute TTLs (or less!) for A records. Every few days/weeks the tld gets a single query that tells them you were making some sort of request so an unknown domain anywhere in queried delegation. That query only includes the 2nd level domain and a request for that domain's nameserver(s). The rest of the recursive resolution and most future queries only need to involve the domain's nameserver. Yes, some information is leaked. This is unfortunate, but there is a huge difference between leaking that you occasionally visit something at exsmple.com and leaking your pattern of life (the exact subdomains you visit with ~minute-ish granularity).