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> We continue to explore enabling DoH in other regions, and are working to add more providers as trusted resolvers to our program. DoH is just one of the many p

> We continue to explore enabling DoH in other regions, and are working to add more providers as trusted resolvers to our program. DoH is just one of the many privacy protections you can expect to see from us in 2020. Cloudflare is just one of the initial providers and they indicate that they are adding more. Also, I'm assuming you can add your own custom provider based on the screenshot in the article. You can just disable the feature as well.

ThePhysicist 7y ago
99 % of users won’t touch default values, so it’s not a valid excuse. I really have come to the conclusion that privacy is just a marketing feature for Mozilla. They e.g. also do nothing against data exfiltration by popular extensions although they have known that issue for years. If they’re really serious about privacy they should have waited to implement DoH as an open standard and allow more DNS providers to support it. The browser could then simply see if your default DNS supports it and if yes switch to DoH. This really smells like some kind of data deal between them and Cloudflare. This is not surprising because DNS data is really valuable and passive DNS monitoring is used for many purposes, e.g. security and marketing. Controlling this data gives you many interesting business opportunities, hence I can understand why Cloudflare and Google are after it. It’s also revealing that they don’t enable this in the EU, because they rightfully fear that it’s not compliant.
- cnst 7y ago
  > I really have come to the conclusion that privacy is just a marketing feature for Mozilla. They e.gg. also do nothing against data exfiltration by popular extensions although they have known that issue for years. I thought about this recently, and the move to HTTPS-Everywhere is the biggest issue here. In the old days, you could have something like the @guard firewall on Windows, which could examine all outgoing HTTP connections, and block ads and malware by examining not just the hostname, but also the URI of each request. This meant it was separate from the browser, worked with all browsers, and didn't break every time your browser is updated. It's pretty easy to write a similar tool on UNIX to act as a proxy, too, and make it network-wide through your OSS router. Nowdays, because it's all encrypted with certificate authorities and all, it's much more problematic to block ads and malware, because then you'd also have to intercept HTTPS, and manage certificate authorities and such. I guess it's still doable in principle, just more involved, with a considerably worse UI? Has anyone tried anything like that in the HTTPS world, do any solutions exist as FLOSS at all?
  - munchbunny 7y ago
    Intercepting HTTPS is possible, but not easy. It just requires configuring your browser to use a known key pair for client authentication so that you can MITM yourself from a local or network proxy. On the consideration of trade-offs, I think HTTPS-Everywhere is completely worth it. It may be more complex to intercept your own traffic, but since you are in control of one of the endpoints and the ISPs (which in the US are openly trying to market your browsing data) are not, I still consider it an overall win for privacy.
  - nullc 7y ago
    HTTPS intercepting proxies ("middle boxes") are commonly deployed in the corporate world. Firefox-- and internet protocols themselves-- makes many concessions to avoid gratuitously breaking these things. For free software, squid ssl-bump works, though is something of a pain to configure!
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      > makes many concessions to avoid gratuitously breaking these things. Or to look at it from another perspective, if you do this then in configuring the browser to accept it (typically, adding a private CA as trusted) you agree that you broke the browser's provided security promises and are happy without them. In principle this can be safe if the middlebox you use has its finger on the pulse (usually dubious) and you're applying security updates to the middlebox as you would a browser or other outward facing software. So far I've never seen one I'd trust.
- orf 7y ago
  DoH is an open standard. DoH is also better for the 99% of users who don’t care about DNS resolvers and use their standard, shoddy and privacy invasive ISP provided one.
  - ThePhysicist 7y ago
    Just because something is open doesn't mean that it's ok to push it on users at will. DoH is highly controversial and not a standard, there are only a handful of players that push it for their own benefit. Also, in most parts of the world people trust their local ISPs more than giant US corporations, you should not assume that everyone welcomes this centralization.
    - bad_user 7y ago
      > in most parts of the world people trust their local ISPs more than giant US corporations On what is this assertion based on? I'm part of this world and I'm not a US citizen. I do not trust my local ISP, because they log and report traffic to local security agencies. It's bening at this point, tracking illegal activities, but they can connect whatever I do with my real name and address. If I were to guess, in most parts of this world people don't have freedom of speech and fear repercussions from their government for their online activity. The profiling that US companies do for serving better ads is essentially a first world problem, and a pretty irrelevant one for most people. Also if we had such deep mistrust in US companies, first of all we shouldn't be using devices and operating systems built by US companies.
  - ajsnigrutin 7y ago
    My ISP has to obey the rules of my government, and it is not allowed to sell my data. It's in my country, with my regulatory bodies and close enough that I (or a group of people like me) can sue them, if they start doing bad things. What the hell am I supposed to do again cloudflare?
- the8472 7y ago
  > They e.g. also do nothing against data exfiltration by popular extensions although they have known that issue for years. This kind of sentiment compels mozilla into becoming an apple-like gatekeeper to a walled garden because people conflate the trustworthiness of extension authors with mozilla's trustworthiness, which leads to less software freedom, a single point of failure and a less diverse ecosystem.
  - ThePhysicist 7y ago
    There simply should not be an API that allows exfiltrating the URL history of a user and then send it to a remote backend, at least not without making this very, very explicit to the user (which they currently do not). You don't need to be a "gatekeeper to a walled garden", it's just necessary to have sensible APIs that respect users privacy. I think a browser that puts privacy as its primary feature should be able to do that.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      It asks the user if they want to allow an extension to "Access Browsing History" [1]. That seems pretty explicit and self-explanatory to me. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/permission-request-messages-firefox-extensions#w_access-browsing-history https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/permission-request-mess...
      - ThePhysicist 7y ago
        No, it would be straightforward if they asked the user something like this: "Is it ok that this extension sends every single URL you open to an untrusted third party for processing? Please note that URLs might contain sensitive data like access tokens or session information." Even so, I don't think such an API should exist. And if you absolutely need to have something like this you should restrict it to domain information by default, cutting away the path. I can understand that Google might not care much about this (Chrome itself is a data collection platform), but I really don't get why Mozilla is so lenient about it as well, as their main differentiator has been user privacy for years.
nullc 7y ago
"You can just opt out" is the same tired line that in former times Mozilla has fought against. It's extremely hard to keep track of and manage "opt outs", especially in a household with multiple computers and multiple people. Formerly, I "opted out" of having a browser that phoned home my browsing traffic by using Firefox.
- andyjohnson0 7y ago
  > Formerly, I "opted out" of having a browser that phoned home my browsing traffic by using Firefox. Formerly your browser still "phoned home" to your default DNS provider, using an insecure protocol. I appreciate your concerns but, unless you run your own DNS server, you have to trust someone at some point.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    > you have to trust someone at some point. Give me a non-profit infra provider than I can donate to, similar to Let's Encrypt. Let's call it "Let's Resolve", give it a non-profit charter and org style, with transparency, governance, and strong privacy protections. Mozilla could even be one of the sponsors of such an org, thereby ensuring the values it supports are adhered to. Open Street Map runs on a budget of ~$100k a year. The costs for such an org would be similar; DNS->DoH VMs, orchestration, labor, admin. I've warmed to Cloudflare, but you know how things usually go with for profit benevolence. The love always runs out. Always. And that's okay! Nothing lasts forever, but we need to start putting effort into orgs that are designed to last while protecting user citizens. Build trust, not companies.
    - nullc 7y ago
      I'm dubious. If someone asked me to run such a thing and offered to pay for it, I'd turn them down: It's too easy to be compromised (via hackers, including the state funded kind) or ordered (e.g. via an administrative subpoena, NSL, or plain court order) and fail to deliver on the expected privacy. This false sense of security might even get people killed, when they think their activities are private when they really aren't. You might get a strong selection effect for parties who are less principled, thoughtful, knowledgeable, or even outright less honest. Why should someone trust them more than cloudflare (who is already seeing a substantial portion of user traffic, because if you don't use them-- you get DDOS attacks and then mysteriously cloudflare sales contacting you). The situation with Let's Encrypt is different-- the SSL CA process is already fairly insecure and bogus certs are already easily issued to any party that can MITM traffic to the target server. Even ignoring that ... Any one rogue CA which is trusted by browsers is enough. So there is little to no incentive to compromise Let's Encrypt.
jotm 7y ago
> You can just disable the feature as well For now. Where's my option to disable complete blocks on domains with funky/invalid SSL certificates? Gone, for the past few years. Sure, most people don't need that. Most people don't care about DoH being enabled by default, either. I do.
john990 7y ago
> Cloudflare is just one of the initial providers and they indicate that they are adding more. Also, I'm assuming you can add your own custom provider based on the screenshot in the article. You can just disable the feature as well. Or go for https://firejaildns.wordpress.com/ https://firejaildns.wordpress.com/ - Linux workstation DoH proxy, more than 60 DoH providers. When you start, the proxy chooses one at random. You can also set the servers in Firefox.
- pitay 7y ago
  If you just want a DNSCrypt and DoH proxy for Windows you can use Simple DNSCrypt. It also has over 60 DNS providers included and has data on which ones use filters to block requests, which ones log requests, and which ones support DNSSEC. How much you trust this data is up to you. https://www.simplednscrypt.org/ https://www.simplednscrypt.org/

ThePhysicist 7y ago

99 % of users won’t touch default values, so it’s not a valid excuse. I really have come to the conclusion that privacy is just a marketing feature for Mozilla. They e.g. also do nothing against data exfiltration by popular extensions although they have known that issue for years. If they’re really serious about privacy they should have waited to implement DoH as an open standard and allow more DNS providers to support it. The browser could then simply see if your default DNS supports it and if yes switch to DoH. This really smells like some kind of data deal between them and Cloudflare. This is not surprising because DNS data is really valuable and passive DNS monitoring is used for many purposes, e.g. security and marketing. Controlling this data gives you many interesting business opportunities, hence I can understand why Cloudflare and Google are after it. It’s also revealing that they don’t enable this in the EU, because they rightfully fear that it’s not compliant.

cnst 7y ago
> I really have come to the conclusion that privacy is just a marketing feature for Mozilla. They e.gg. also do nothing against data exfiltration by popular extensions although they have known that issue for years. I thought about this recently, and the move to HTTPS-Everywhere is the biggest issue here. In the old days, you could have something like the @guard firewall on Windows, which could examine all outgoing HTTP connections, and block ads and malware by examining not just the hostname, but also the URI of each request. This meant it was separate from the browser, worked with all browsers, and didn't break every time your browser is updated. It's pretty easy to write a similar tool on UNIX to act as a proxy, too, and make it network-wide through your OSS router. Nowdays, because it's all encrypted with certificate authorities and all, it's much more problematic to block ads and malware, because then you'd also have to intercept HTTPS, and manage certificate authorities and such. I guess it's still doable in principle, just more involved, with a considerably worse UI? Has anyone tried anything like that in the HTTPS world, do any solutions exist as FLOSS at all?
- munchbunny 7y ago
  Intercepting HTTPS is possible, but not easy. It just requires configuring your browser to use a known key pair for client authentication so that you can MITM yourself from a local or network proxy. On the consideration of trade-offs, I think HTTPS-Everywhere is completely worth it. It may be more complex to intercept your own traffic, but since you are in control of one of the endpoints and the ISPs (which in the US are openly trying to market your browsing data) are not, I still consider it an overall win for privacy.
- nullc 7y ago
  HTTPS intercepting proxies ("middle boxes") are commonly deployed in the corporate world. Firefox-- and internet protocols themselves-- makes many concessions to avoid gratuitously breaking these things. For free software, squid ssl-bump works, though is something of a pain to configure!
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    > makes many concessions to avoid gratuitously breaking these things. Or to look at it from another perspective, if you do this then in configuring the browser to accept it (typically, adding a private CA as trusted) you agree that you broke the browser's provided security promises and are happy without them. In principle this can be safe if the middlebox you use has its finger on the pulse (usually dubious) and you're applying security updates to the middlebox as you would a browser or other outward facing software. So far I've never seen one I'd trust.
orf 7y ago
DoH is an open standard. DoH is also better for the 99% of users who don’t care about DNS resolvers and use their standard, shoddy and privacy invasive ISP provided one.
- ThePhysicist 7y ago
  Just because something is open doesn't mean that it's ok to push it on users at will. DoH is highly controversial and not a standard, there are only a handful of players that push it for their own benefit. Also, in most parts of the world people trust their local ISPs more than giant US corporations, you should not assume that everyone welcomes this centralization.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    > in most parts of the world people trust their local ISPs more than giant US corporations On what is this assertion based on? I'm part of this world and I'm not a US citizen. I do not trust my local ISP, because they log and report traffic to local security agencies. It's bening at this point, tracking illegal activities, but they can connect whatever I do with my real name and address. If I were to guess, in most parts of this world people don't have freedom of speech and fear repercussions from their government for their online activity. The profiling that US companies do for serving better ads is essentially a first world problem, and a pretty irrelevant one for most people. Also if we had such deep mistrust in US companies, first of all we shouldn't be using devices and operating systems built by US companies.
- ajsnigrutin 7y ago
  My ISP has to obey the rules of my government, and it is not allowed to sell my data. It's in my country, with my regulatory bodies and close enough that I (or a group of people like me) can sue them, if they start doing bad things. What the hell am I supposed to do again cloudflare?
the8472 7y ago
> They e.g. also do nothing against data exfiltration by popular extensions although they have known that issue for years. This kind of sentiment compels mozilla into becoming an apple-like gatekeeper to a walled garden because people conflate the trustworthiness of extension authors with mozilla's trustworthiness, which leads to less software freedom, a single point of failure and a less diverse ecosystem.
- ThePhysicist 7y ago
  There simply should not be an API that allows exfiltrating the URL history of a user and then send it to a remote backend, at least not without making this very, very explicit to the user (which they currently do not). You don't need to be a "gatekeeper to a walled garden", it's just necessary to have sensible APIs that respect users privacy. I think a browser that puts privacy as its primary feature should be able to do that.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    It asks the user if they want to allow an extension to "Access Browsing History" [1]. That seems pretty explicit and self-explanatory to me. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/permission-request-messages-firefox-extensions#w_access-browsing-history https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/permission-request-mess...
    - ThePhysicist 7y ago
      No, it would be straightforward if they asked the user something like this: "Is it ok that this extension sends every single URL you open to an untrusted third party for processing? Please note that URLs might contain sensitive data like access tokens or session information." Even so, I don't think such an API should exist. And if you absolutely need to have something like this you should restrict it to domain information by default, cutting away the path. I can understand that Google might not care much about this (Chrome itself is a data collection platform), but I really don't get why Mozilla is so lenient about it as well, as their main differentiator has been user privacy for years.

nullc 7y ago

"You can just opt out" is the same tired line that in former times Mozilla has fought against. It's extremely hard to keep track of and manage "opt outs", especially in a household with multiple computers and multiple people. Formerly, I "opted out" of having a browser that phoned home my browsing traffic by using Firefox.

andyjohnson0 7y ago
> Formerly, I "opted out" of having a browser that phoned home my browsing traffic by using Firefox. Formerly your browser still "phoned home" to your default DNS provider, using an insecure protocol. I appreciate your concerns but, unless you run your own DNS server, you have to trust someone at some point.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  > you have to trust someone at some point. Give me a non-profit infra provider than I can donate to, similar to Let's Encrypt. Let's call it "Let's Resolve", give it a non-profit charter and org style, with transparency, governance, and strong privacy protections. Mozilla could even be one of the sponsors of such an org, thereby ensuring the values it supports are adhered to. Open Street Map runs on a budget of ~$100k a year. The costs for such an org would be similar; DNS->DoH VMs, orchestration, labor, admin. I've warmed to Cloudflare, but you know how things usually go with for profit benevolence. The love always runs out. Always. And that's okay! Nothing lasts forever, but we need to start putting effort into orgs that are designed to last while protecting user citizens. Build trust, not companies.
  - nullc 7y ago
    I'm dubious. If someone asked me to run such a thing and offered to pay for it, I'd turn them down: It's too easy to be compromised (via hackers, including the state funded kind) or ordered (e.g. via an administrative subpoena, NSL, or plain court order) and fail to deliver on the expected privacy. This false sense of security might even get people killed, when they think their activities are private when they really aren't. You might get a strong selection effect for parties who are less principled, thoughtful, knowledgeable, or even outright less honest. Why should someone trust them more than cloudflare (who is already seeing a substantial portion of user traffic, because if you don't use them-- you get DDOS attacks and then mysteriously cloudflare sales contacting you). The situation with Let's Encrypt is different-- the SSL CA process is already fairly insecure and bogus certs are already easily issued to any party that can MITM traffic to the target server. Even ignoring that ... Any one rogue CA which is trusted by browsers is enough. So there is little to no incentive to compromise Let's Encrypt.

jotm 7y ago

> You can just disable the feature as well For now. Where's my option to disable complete blocks on domains with funky/invalid SSL certificates? Gone, for the past few years. Sure, most people don't need that. Most people don't care about DoH being enabled by default, either. I do.

john990 7y ago

> Cloudflare is just one of the initial providers and they indicate that they are adding more. Also, I'm assuming you can add your own custom provider based on the screenshot in the article. You can just disable the feature as well. Or go for https://firejaildns.wordpress.com/ https://firejaildns.wordpress.com/ - Linux workstation DoH proxy, more than 60 DoH providers. When you start, the proxy chooses one at random. You can also set the servers in Firefox.

pitay 7y ago
If you just want a DNSCrypt and DoH proxy for Windows you can use Simple DNSCrypt. It also has over 60 DNS providers included and has data on which ones use filters to block requests, which ones log requests, and which ones support DNSSEC. How much you trust this data is up to you. https://www.simplednscrypt.org/ https://www.simplednscrypt.org/