Mozilla to encrypt traffic, for improved browser privacy

Mozilla has announced the plan to offer DNS(Domain Name Server)-over-HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) – DoH feature, by default, for the users in the US. Selena Deckelmann, Mozilla’s Senior Director of Engineering, explained in a blog post that a small number of users would see the new feature, at the beginning.

The reason for this decision would be to make the web safer and improve the privacy of users, by encrypting DNS (Domain Name Servers) query traffic. Thus, third parties could not eavesdrop on users’ connections. Also, the users could not be redirected to phishing or malware sites via attacks that allter the communication between the server and the users, who believe that they are directly communicating with each other (man-in-the-middle-attacks).

Still, as the communication will be encrypted, there are concerns that this might prevent Internet Service Providers from applying filters requested by parents to protect their children’s browsing. Still, to prevent that, Deckelmann mentioned that “Firefox already detects that parental controls are enabled in the operating system, and if they are in effect, Firefox will disable DoH”