Mozilla has started rolling out encrypted DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) by default for its Firefox users in the United States.
DoH provides increased security for Internet users, the DoH protocol ensures that DNS queries and DNS responses are sent and received over HTTP using TLS.
Mozilla has been working on bringing DoH to Firefox since 2017, and tens of thousands were already using the protocol in September 2019, when it revealed plans to roll out DoH to Firefox users in the U.S., in fallback mode.
Starting this week, DoH in Firefox becomes default for U.S. users, with the rollout expected to continue over the next several weeks, “to confirm no major issues are discovered as this new protocol is enabled for Firefox’s US-based users,” Mozilla says.
While the protocol is being enabled by default for U.S. users only, those living in other countries can manually enable it, by going to Settings > General > Networking Settings and clicking on the Settings button on the right. On the next Settings window, one should simply scroll down until the Enable DNS over HTTPS checkbox appears.
Firefox provides users with the option to choose between two DoH providers, namely Cloudflare and NextDNS, both trusted resolvers. Once the Enable DNS over HTTPS checkbox is checked, a drop-down menu allows users to select the preferred resolver.
Moving forward, Mozilla is looking into enabling DoH by default in other regions too, as well as into adding more providers as trusted resolvers to its program.
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