VyprDNS: secure no-logging DNS for Giganews and Golden Frog customers
Golden Frog launched VyprDNS today, a secure no-logging DNS service that is available for free for all VyprVPN customers and Giganews Platinum and Diamond account customers.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the cornerstones of the Internet. It is best known for translating domain names such as ghacks.net to numerical IP addresses 96.30.22.116.
Most Internet users use the DNS service offered by their Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it is possible to switch to another service entirely and it is usually the right thing to do.
While it is comfortable to use your IPS's DNS, as you do not need to configure a thing, it may not be the best option as performance, privacy, security or reliability may suffer.
Performance suffers if look ups take too long. If the DNS is slow or maxed out by too many customers, it can slow down the loading of websites in your browser among other things.
Privacy may be an issue if the IPS sells the data or uses it for marketing purposes,and reliability comes into play if requests are blocked, censored or redirected.
Some ISPs hijack domain requests that cannot be resolved, for instance because of a typo, and display special error pages, often with advertisement or other marketing information, to the customer.
Blocked resources and some country-wide censorship methods can be circumvented with a change of DNS provider. If a website is blocked in a company network, airport or hotel, you may be able to access it using a different DNS provider.
And since your connection is encrypted, no-one can just read the data that is being exchanged.
Companies like Google, Open DNS or Yandex are making available public DNS services. Many services are free on first glance, but free usually means that the data is logged, that ads or other contents may be injected, or that the data is sold right away to third-parties.
VyprDNS addresses all of these concerns. The DNS service has a zero-logging policy which means that none of your requests are logged by Golden Frog. Google DNS for instance logs IP addresses, the websites that you have visited, geolocation data, request types, transport protocols, the response code or the client's ISP.
The DNS service is managed by Golden Frog, which means that it is not making use of third-party servers which might monitor, log or manipulate data.
It benefits from the same server locations that are being used for the company's virtual private network service, which means servers on all continents and many different countries.
Setting it up
VyprDNS is part of VyprVPN which means that it will run automatically whenever you connect to the VPN. You can either download and install apps -- available for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android -- or configure the VPN connection manually instead.
The Android application uses the new DNS service automatically for instance as you can see on the screenshot below.
It is still possible to change the DNS provider manually in the options if you prefer to use a third-party DNS provider instead.
Closing Words
The new DNS service is a no-brainer for Giganews Platinum or Diamond customers as well as existing VyprDNS customers, as it is available without extra charge.
The inclusion of a privacy-focused DNS service may persuade others to give the service a try. A 3-day free trial is available to test the VPN service. A basic account offering unlimited data usage and one connection at the same time is available for $6.67 per month.
Pro and premier accounts add more features such as NAT Firewall inclusion, OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec and Chameleon protocols support, and additional connections.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm a happy Giganews Diamond customer and as part of that I'm getting VyprVPN Pro free of charge. I have configured the service manually on my Windows 7 system.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.