Setting Up Next DNS
You might ask: “Don’t I already have DNS?”. The short answer is “Yes”, in most cases your ISP (the company that you buy your internet from) does give you a DNS which they own and can see and sell all of your data to third party companies. This give your ISP a lot of knowledge about you that you might not want them to have. Where you go, what you search, and who you talk to. There is a much more private and secure way to take control over your DNS (Domain Name System – like the Internet’s phone book). It is a cloud service called Next DNS. We will be setting up Next DNS and learning what advantages it offers.
Privacy and Control
Next DNS is a cloud service that you can configure right from your browser. It offers free and paid tiers, but the free tier is suitable for most people. If you want to help them out, it is only about $20 a year.
Once you setup your account the first page that you see is the setup page. Scroll down to “setup guide”. Here you can see that there are many devices that you can configure. Just follow the steps for your device. Many of them have installer programs that make it simple. Once you do that you will se a green check mark in the “linked IP” field.
NextDNS is very configurable and you can tailor it to your needs and those of your family. I am going to go through the pages that you can modify things.
NextDNS – Security Page
After you setup your account, you can start to make it your own. The first place is the “Security Tab”. This is where we are going to start filtering out all of the bad stuff before we download it.
Here are the choices:
- Threat Intelligence Feeds – This uses real-time threat intelligence to stop malware and other things and will stop you from seeing or downloading things that could be harmful. Turn this ON
- AI-Driven Threat Detection – This is officially in Beta, but it works very well in most cases.
- Google Safe Browsing – This is for malware and phishing domains. Unlike the one that comes with your browser, this one does not associate your public IP address to threats and does not allow bypassing the block. Turn this ON.
Other Settings to Consider
There are also “Deny Lists” which you can personally use to deny certain things you do not wish to see or be tracked by. Here are a few that I have used as examples:
- *.safebrowsing.googleapis.com
- *.data.microsoft.com
- *.msftconnecttest.com
- *.activity.windows.com
- *.msedge.net
- *.edge.microsoft.com
I am sure that you will come across others that you can add to the list.
Wrapping it all up
As you can see, having a Private DNS has many advantages and will help you to filter out and take back control of your Internet experience. You can also make other DNS choices for your family to keep them safer when they are on the internet. Take the time to signup and experience how good it can be to take back some control of your browsing experience again.