Check if your browser uses Secure DNS, DNSSEC, TLS 1.3, and Encrypted SNI

Martin Brinkmann
Apr 29, 2019
Updated • Nov 25, 2022
Added Encrypted Client Hello ECH information, which replaced ESNI.
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Cloudflare's Browsing Experience Security Check online tool tests the capabilities of the web browser in regards to certain privacy and security related features.

For a subset of Internet users, privacy is of uttermost importance. While the majority seems indifferent, some try their best to implement protective mechanisms to eliminate or at least reduce what companies and maybe even State actors may find out about them when they use the Internet.

Whether that is successful or not depends on the program used to connect to Internet sites, e.g. a browser or media client, and also the system configuration.

The push to using HTTPS on the Internet ensured that much of the data that is transferred between a user's browser or program and Internet sites is encrypted. New technologies, such as Secure DNS or Cloudflare's own encrypted Server Name Indication (SNI) are designed to address leaks caused by DNS queries.

Browsing Experience Security Check

browsing experience security check

Browsing Experience Security Check tests a web browser's capabilities in regards to security and privacy features.

Note: The test is maintained by Cloudflare; the company designed Encrypted SNI which the test checks for among other things.

The test is straightforward: connect to the test page using your browser and hit the run button on the page to run the test.

It tests whether Secure DNS, DNSSEC, TLS 1.3, and Encrypted SNI are enabled. Here is a short description of each of the features:

  • Secure DNS -- A technology that encrypts DNS queries, e.g. looking up ghacks.net to retrieve the IP address. Two standards, DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-HTTPS fall under the category.
  • DNSSEC -- Designed to verify the authenticity of DNS queries.
  • TLS 1.3 -- The latest version of the TLS protocol that features plenty of improvements when compared to previous versions.
  • Encrypted SNI -- Server Name Indication, short SNI, reveals the hostname during TLS connections. Anyone listening to network traffic, e.g. ISPs or organizations, may record sites visited even if TLS and Secure DNS is used. Encrypted SNI encrypts the bits so that only the IP address may still be leaked.
  • Encrypted Client Hello -- Replaced ESNI. Designed to address the shortcomings of ESNI.

The only browser that supports all four of the features at the time is Firefox. Two of the features are still in development and testing though:

You may check out our Secure DNS setup guide for Firefox here. Here is a short list of instructions on setting up Secure DNS and Encrypted SNI in Firefox:

  1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
  2. Confirm that you will be careful.
  3. ECH: Search for network.dns.echconfig.enabled and toggle the value to True
  4. Secure DNS: Search for network.trr.mode and set it to 2.  Search for network.trr.uri and set it to https://mozilla.cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query

Note that Secure DNS supports other servers if you don't want to use Cloudflare for that.

Now You: Which privacy and security extensions or settings do you use in your browser?

Summary
Check if your browser uses Secure DNS, DNSSEC, TLS 1.3, and Encrypted SNI
Article Name
Check if your browser uses Secure DNS, DNSSEC, TLS 1.3, and Encrypted SNI
Description
Cloudflare's Browsing Experience Security Check online tool tests the capabilities of the web browser in regards to certain privacy and security related features.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @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.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    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.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      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)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    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.

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