Firefox now turns on DNS over HTTPS by default, here's what that means

Mozilla Firefox volition now have DNS over HTTPS (DoH) on past default for people in the U.S.. As a consequence, browsing the web will now be more than secure and go through encryption. People outside of the U.Due south. can plow the feature on besides, though it isn't on past default. People tin choose between Cloudflare or NextDNS every bit providers for DoH, with Cloudflare equally the default.

Mozilla's blog post announcing the move to accept DoH on by default does an excellent chore explaining why DoH is needed. Here'due south a key excerpt from Mozilla'due south explanation:

DNS is a database that links a human being-friendly name, such as www.mozilla.org, to a figurer-friendly series of numbers, called an IP address (due east.g. 192.0.2.one). By performing a "lookup" in this database, your spider web browser is able to find websites on your behalf. Considering of how DNS was originally designed decades agone, browsers doing DNS lookups for websites — even encrypted https:// sites — had to perform these lookups without encryption.

Because DNS was not originally encrypted, people could collect or block data when people navigated the spider web. DoH performs DNS lookups within an encrypted HTTPS connection and adds an encryption layer to a process that previously lacked one.

Several browsers support DoH, though it's oftentimes a hidden feature. To turn the feature on within many Chromium-based browsers, you need to turn it on. For example, to turn DoH on in Google Chrome, you need to employ chrome://flags.

Firefox now has DoH on by default for anyone inside the U.S., and people outside the U.S. can enable DoH through Firefox'south settings. In the browser'south settings, you can also choose between Cloudflare and NextDNS.

Secure browsing

Mozilla Firefox is a popular browser with an emphasis on speed and privacy.

An internet connection will soon be required when setting up Windows 11 Pro

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An internet connexion will shortly exist required when setting upwardly Windows eleven Pro

Microsoft has announced that after this yr, users volition be required to connect to the internet and sign-in with a Microsoft Account during the out of box setup experience on Windows 11 Pro. Microsoft has already been enforcing this requirement on Windows 11 Home since launch concluding October, and Windows 11 Pro is now expected to follow suit soon.