A lot of people don’t know this, but your ISP knows each and every website that you end up visiting. Many ISPs actually use this data, selling it to advertisers to boost their own profits. What’s truly heinous is that they do this without most users knowing what’s truly going on. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Apple is trying its best to prevent this sort of thing from happening and it is partnering up with Cloudfare to try and come up with a solution.
The way that ISPs track your browsing is through the DNS system. When you type in a website name, this is passed through the DNS or Domain Name Server so that it can be turned into the IP address that’s actually required in order to get to the site in question. The DNS that you end up using for this sort of thing is most often either owned or in some way controlled by the ISP that you get your internet from, which means that it is quite easy for these service providers to track all of the sites you end up visiting.
What Apple and Cloudfare are doing is that they are trying to come up with a new system that would end up dealing with this sort of thing. This new system will be called ODoH, or Oblivious DNS over HTTPS, and it will basically make it so that the DNS request would first be encrypted and then it would be passed through a proxy before it is sent on to the ISP, thereby making it a lot more difficult for ISPs to be able to see what websites you end up visiting at any given point in time.
Because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up safeguarding the privacy of internet users everywhere, it is highly commendable that both of these companies are working together to try and facilitate this sort of thing all in all. ISPs have far too much control over internet users anyway, and the fact that they can also profit over their ability to see what you are browsing and when is in many ways a further leap beyond an already crossed line. This is only a proposal at this point but indicates a bold new direction as far as user privacy is concerned.
Read next: Coalition of Privacy Groups Demand More Transparency from Google on Geo-Warrant Requests by Law Enforcement
The way that ISPs track your browsing is through the DNS system. When you type in a website name, this is passed through the DNS or Domain Name Server so that it can be turned into the IP address that’s actually required in order to get to the site in question. The DNS that you end up using for this sort of thing is most often either owned or in some way controlled by the ISP that you get your internet from, which means that it is quite easy for these service providers to track all of the sites you end up visiting.
What Apple and Cloudfare are doing is that they are trying to come up with a new system that would end up dealing with this sort of thing. This new system will be called ODoH, or Oblivious DNS over HTTPS, and it will basically make it so that the DNS request would first be encrypted and then it would be passed through a proxy before it is sent on to the ISP, thereby making it a lot more difficult for ISPs to be able to see what websites you end up visiting at any given point in time.
Because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up safeguarding the privacy of internet users everywhere, it is highly commendable that both of these companies are working together to try and facilitate this sort of thing all in all. ISPs have far too much control over internet users anyway, and the fact that they can also profit over their ability to see what you are browsing and when is in many ways a further leap beyond an already crossed line. This is only a proposal at this point but indicates a bold new direction as far as user privacy is concerned.
Read next: Coalition of Privacy Groups Demand More Transparency from Google on Geo-Warrant Requests by Law Enforcement
