The EU now offers its own DNS resolution service (Resolver) and wants to help its citizens to become less dependent on offers from large US companies such as Cloudflare and Google. The service is called DNS4EU and pre-filters internet addresses at the user’s request: In addition to phishing and fraud sites, it blocks websites and advertising that are harmful to minors.
A DNS resolver is one of the almost invisible basic services for stable Internet access: it works in the background, usually at the provider, and ensures that Internet addresses such as
Dr. Christopher Kunzwww.heise.de
are translated into IP addresses such as2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85
. However, in many countries – including Germany –, blocking orders by lobby associations or youth protection authorities are often implemented at DNS level. For this reason and for reasons of speed, users often make do with alternative providers such as Google, which not only uses one of the most beautiful IP addresses with the resolver 8.8.8.8, but also answers over a trillion queries a day. Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and Quad9 (9.9.9.9) also operate open resolvers. The problem is that many of these servers are located in the USA, which is why the Quad9 consortium has already moved its headquarters to Zurich.
Good to see the European Union taking – albeit small – steps towards that elusive digital sovereignty and autonomy from US-based companies. While far from the flashy headlines about AI and quantum, DNS over HTTPS improves user privacy and security by preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of DNS data by man-in-the-middle attacks.