Technology Services

DNS and Your Privacy

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by

doachs
1.1.1.1
1.1.1.1

On April 1, 2018 Cloudflare released a new DNS service called 1.1.1.1.  One of the primary goals of this service is to allow users to hide their DNS requests from their ISP.   A typical home ISP ( like Comcast, and  Mediacom ) may be logging all the DNS requests you do, selling that information to third parties, returning false information to redirect you to an approved site, or blocking things like the Pirate Bay.

There are other similar services out there such as Google’s 8.8.8.8 and OpenDNS.  1.1.1.1 is the most recent of these services and is focused on users privacy as well as touting extremely quick DNS lookups.

I wanted to point out that the Gustavus DNS servers (138.236.128.100 and 138.236.128.101) do not track, log, or otherwise compromise the privacy of our users.  However if for any reason you do not trust the Gustavus DNS servers, we do not block access to 1.1.1.1 from Cloudflare, 8.8.8.8 from Google, 208.67.222.222 from OpenDNS, or any of their IPv6 equivalents.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at noc@gustavus.edu.

Comments

6 responses to “DNS and Your Privacy”

  1. Sean Avatar
    Sean

    This is great. I switched from OpenDNS to Cloudfare when I heard the news about the new 1.1.1.1 service. And I moved away from Google DNS a few years back when I started to resist anything by Google — especially since their incursion into higher education — so it’s good to hear that the school does not block Cloudfare DNS. Now if I could simply convince the college to break from Google. So do you know if we are legally bound to use Gmail since the college has switched to Google?

    Reply
    1. Dan Oachs Avatar
      Dan Oachs

      No, you are not bound to use the Gmail service for your Gustavus email. It is an option for those who wish to use it. Others, like myself, can continue to use our in house email service.

      Reply
  2. Sean Avatar
    Sean

    Good to hear.

    Thanks Dan.

    Reply
  3. Sean Avatar
    Sean

    I guess I should have been more clear: I forward my school email from Google to my personal Protonmail account. I know that the original message is still stored as Trash on my school Gmail, but I was curious if it’s kosher to redirect my email to my personal account?

    Thanks.

    Reply
    1. Dan Oachs Avatar
      Dan Oachs

      Ah, I see you already converted to GusMail/Gmail. If you didn’t do that, you could have forwarded your email directly from the local Gustavus email server to a Protonmail account if you wanted and no copy of the email would be stored in your account here.

      What you do with your email is totally up to you.

      Reply
      1. Sean Avatar
        Sean

        That’s what I used to do under the old system, but I thought everyone had to migrate to GusMail. Is there any way to go back?

        Reply

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