How to Activate Private DNS on Samsung

 Private DNS can be a great VPN alternative to get rid of annoying ads and online tracking and to protect your Android phone from malware.

 Almost all public Internet connections are now unencrypted, making them vulnerable to attackers who can access network channels, reducing users' privacy. These concerns have increased in recent times. 

Almost every Internet connection depends on the Domain Name System (DNS). Whereas, DNS translates domain names like computer-wd.com into IP addresses, which are used by network devices to route data.

 But the problem with DNS servers is that they don't take your privacy into account.

In contrast, Private DNS on Android uses TLS, like HTTPS. The encryption provided by TLS thus eliminates opportunities for eavesdropping and tampering with DNS queries on the network. DNS over TLS is a method of sending DNS queries over an encrypted connection.

 This new feature forms a dedicated and secure DNS connection on Android, which means that parties between your Android phone and the websites you visit won't be able to snoop on your DNS queries. TLS DNS offers control over privacy risks that arise from being able to eavesdrop on DNS messages such as man-in-the-middle attacks, Internet service providers, mobile operators, and more.

1 Comparison between normal DNS and Private DNS

When you type a URL into your browser's address bar, your phone first connects to a DNS server. This acts as an online phone book, where it replaces the friendly name you entered with the site's IP address, which is usually a string of numbers.

 By default, this connection is unencrypted. This means that you are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks where hackers make their device look like a Wi-Fi hotspot.

 If you accidentally connect to one of them, they can redirect your DNS requests to malicious websites where they can infect your phone or trick you into revealing personal information.

As a result, tools have been created to secure the interaction between your device and the DNS server. This includes DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT), which encrypts the communication between your phone and the DNS server.

 Encrypted data is not readable without a private key, which hackers should not have. The problem is that many Internet service providers and wireless carriers do not use these security tools, which puts you at risk of these types of attacks.

 The big reason for this is that ISPs often sell your DNS records to advertisers, so proper security will cost them money. In contrast, public DNS servers offer many advantages over the DNS servers provided by your wireless carrier.

 That is, some of them will not log any information about how you use their servers. This means no tracking of where you are online and no third-party ads using your data.

Prior to Android 9, the only way to use private DNS servers was to configure them for individual saved Wi-Fi networks or use a local VPN.

 The previous method had limitations of being only applicable to Wi-Fi, meaning your phone was vulnerable when using cellular data.

 Thus you need to pay a subscription fee to a reputable provider. Thanks to Private DNS support, all these drawbacks are gone, as Private DNS applies to all data connections and is usually free.

 Thus you will get a faster internet connection compared to using ISP DNS services, avoiding censorship, providing as safe internet as possible against threats, and filtering like ad blocking, pornography blocking, phishing, malware, data collection, etc.

2 How to activate the Private DNS feature on Samsung

Since native support for private DNS is a new feature, you will need to use the Android 9 update or later. If so, go to Settings > Connections > More connection options or more connection settings > Now click on Private DNS or 'Private DNS'. And then choose Save.

Finally, choose "Private DNS Provider hostname" or "Private DNS Provider hostname" in the pop-up window and enter the URL of the private DNS service.

 The most popular is Cloudflare's free 1.1.1.1 service, so if you want to go further, just copy and paste Cloudflare's text (1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com) into the dialog.

 We recommend this server as it supports DoH and DoT and access to the server is completely free. The only problem is that they do some logging.

 Most registrations are deleted after 24 hours, but there are some data points (which you can check here) that are stored indefinitely.

So don't hesitate to activate the Private DNS feature on your mobile anymore, to make your web browsing faster, safer, and more comfortable!