Privacy

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Do I really need a VPN or does DNS over HTTPS does the trick? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Considering my threat model is just preventing my ISP to know which websites I am visiting and to prevent my government (India) from tracking me, do I need to use a VPN?

Currently, I am using a trusted VPN provider with a permanent kill switch and am never off of the VPN. Today, I was reading IVPN's homepage and it says, "A VPN can be effective at encrypting your DNS requests so your ISP or mobile network provider cannot monitor or log the domains you visit." But as far as I know, DNS over HTTPS does encrypt the DNS requests. Right?

I regularly clean my cookies, use hardened browsers, etc. So is a VPN really necessary for me? Or shall I just shift to using Quad9's DoH or something?

Edit - I am using the router provided by the ISP and I cannot change it because I am behind CGNAT. I can use a separate device and install PfSense or OpenWRT or something on it and use that as a firewall. Any suggestions there?

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[–] Rivalarrival 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Without the VPN, your ISP knows you are making a DNS request, but they can't see what domain you are resolving. A moment later, they see the IP that request resolved to, when you request that site. They can see how much encrypted traffic is going back and forth. When they see that the IP address hosts a porn site, and traffic analysis shows you're starting and stopping video streams, they know you're jerking off, but can't figure out your specific fetish.

With a VPN, your ISP only ever sees the VPN's IP address. They know when you are sending and receiving traffic to/from that IP, but they don't know the original source. With traffic analysis, they can probably figure out that you're watching videos, but they probably can't distinguish between YouTube and YouPorn.

[–] Distributed@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

With cloud/edge/cdn, though, theyre basically just seeing that youre connecting to a data center, and ips cycle very frequently so they're not getting useful information.

[–] cyborganism@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Right. You can easily do a reverse lookup to an IP address and see what hostname it is.