1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 - Cloudflare DNS adding VPN

[markopolomp]

SOURCE: https://www.cnet.com/news/cloudflare-offers-mobile-vpn-to-hide-more-of-your-browsing-history/

 

 

Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS will be adding a VPN to your connection if you use their DNS to further increase your privacy and security, and they assure you that it won't slow down your connection speed. 

 

By offering a freemium model, they'll be making money of of this. However, they promise not to slow down their free users' connection to entice users to upgrade. 

 

Supposedly, a high adoption rate of the VPN will make Cloudflare's other products more popular and improve them, which will help improve the experience the general user will have while browsing the internet.

 

Quote

 On Monday, the web security company said it would offer a tool for hiding web traffic coming from your phone with Warp, a new VPN. What's more, Warp aims to get around some of the problems that come with a typical virtual private network, which can sometimes be a slow experience. 

Some savvy internet users already use VPNs, but convincing friends and family members to take the extra step can be hard. Cloudflare said its service is such an improvement that everyday web surfers will use it, too. 

"We built Warp because we've had those conversations with our loved ones too and they've not gone well," said Matt Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, in a blog post.

Much of your sensitive web traffic, like email and financial transactions, is encrypted so a middlemen can't read them. But not all of it is. VPNs address that issue by encrypting all of a user's web traffic. Interest in the tools surged in 2017, when the US Congress reversed an Obama-era policy that forbid internet service providers from selling your web browsing histories. But as Prince noted, VPNs have issues. For example, some services have been found to read all your web traffic and use it for commercial purposes. One VPN slowed internet connections for users of its free product to help out their paying customers.

Cloudflare says Warp will avoid these problems by submitting to audits to make sure it's sticking to its privacy promises. The company will make money with a freemium model, eventually billing companies for an enterprise version of the VPN. And the more people who use Warp, the better Cloudflare's other products, which improve a website's performance, will work. Prince said that means high adoption of the free VPN will make Cloudflare's other products more valuable.

 

I personally haven't used the 1.1.1.1 DNS yet, and I do have my own VPN through PIA (so many acronyms in this post). But I think it's a great idea. It's nice to see companies that actually care about internet privacy (even if they are planning and making it a freemium service). 

[RejZoR]

This isn't a joke. Cloudflare launched their DNS on 1st April last year too...

[markopolomp]

Just now, RejZoR said:

This isn't a joke. Cloudflare launched their DNS on 1st April last year too...

Haha I forgot it was April 1st. Good thing Cloudflare actually cares about this too much to pull a joke like this lol

[THraShArD]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

This isn't a joke. Cloudflare launched their DNS on 1st April last year too...

 

It's a Joke, no Privacy and NSA has Black Boxes on their Routers just like with AT&T and other major T3-OC3 lines..etc

[Fasterthannothing]

I have a VPN from PIA and not sure how I feel about using a free one. I do use their DNS for encrypted DNS servers from my pfSense router however not sure I'm willing to use a VPN from them. Disclosure this is borderline conspiracy so grab your tinfoil hats but some people are worried they are using all this free encrypted stuff to drive people to there services and create a giant pool of data they can view.

[colonel_mortis]

12 minutes ago, Shorty88jr said:

I have a VPN from PIA and not sure how I feel about using a free one. I do use their DNS for encrypted DNS servers from my pfSense router however not sure I'm willing to use a VPN from them. Disclosure this is borderline conspiracy so grab your tinfoil hats but some people are worried they are using all this free encrypted stuff to drive people to there services and create a giant pool of data they can view.

Cloudflare are very clear that they don't do anything with your data - from their blog post,

Quote

1. We don't write user-identifiable log data to disk;

2. We will never sell your browsing data or use it in any way to target you with advertising data;

3. Don’t need to provide any personal information — not your name, phone number, or email address — in order to use the 1.1.1.1 App with Warp; and

4. We will regularly hire outside auditors to ensure we're living up to these promises.

 

[...]

 

Hokey as it sounds, the primary reason we built Warp is that our mission is to help build a better Internet — and the mobile Internet wasn’t as fast or secure as it could be and VPNs all suck. Time and time again we've watched people sit around and talk about how the Internet could be better if someone would just act. We're in a position to act, and we've acted. We made encryption free for all our customers and doubled the size of the encrypted web in the process, we've pushed the adoption of IPv6, we've made DNSSEC easy, and we were the first to turn HTTP/2 up at scale.

This is our nature: find the biggest problems on the Internet and do the right thing to solve them. And, if you look at the biggest problem on the Internet today, it's that the mobile web is too insecure and too slow, and current VPN solutions come with massive performance penalties and, worse, often don’t respect users’ privacy.

There's also more in that post about how they are planning to monetise it (partly by selling a premium plan that uses their Argo network to improve performance even further, and partly by using it as a testbed to then launch an enterprise VPN), and that the VPN doesn't actually cost them any significant amount because they already have all the infrastructure and peering agreements.

 

It certainly does seem suspicious at first glance, but from my experience with using Cloudflare I trust that they are doing it for the right reasons, and that they genuinely care about your privacy.

[S w a t s o n]

I already run my pihole through 1.1.1.1 and can't complain. Cloudflare actually seems to be doing good shit without pure profit motivation, good job.

[LAwLz]

I don't like all the control Cloudflare is getting. They already run quite a large portion of the internet websites and now they are getting control over end user connections too? No thanks. 

 

I also don't trust their promises made in regards to privacy. They haven't made anything to make me trust them, and since promises like these are just words with no way of verifying if it's true, I have a ton of reasons to distrust them. 

[williamcll]

I'll try it out when it is available

[Tamesh16]

i use cloud flare all the time, so it will be interesting to see how it works 

 

[Delicieuxz]

9 hours ago, RejZoR said:

This isn't a joke. Cloudflare launched their DNS on 1st April last year too...

I suspect it's symbolic: 1.1.1.1 = 4 x 1

 

April is the 4th month in the year. So, April (4) 1st (1) represents 1.1.1.1.

 

 

In my simple sensory testing, Cloudflare seems to be very, very slightly less responsive than my ISP's DNS, but because of the privacy it gives I'm using it anyway.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

I suspect it's symbolic: 1.1.1.1 = 4 x 1

 

April is the 4th month in the year. So, April (4) 1st (1) represents 1.1.1.1.

 

 

In my simple sensory testing, Cloudflare seems to be very, very slightly less responsive than my ISP's DNS, but because of the privacy it gives I'm using it anyway.

Lol, never thought of that hehe. I always thought it's some business reason because financial year starts on 1st April in many businesses/companies.

[justpoet]

So…I want to like this.  I love the concept.  I'm also ok with them charging for it (especially cool they aren't going to).

 

However, the key is the small bit of text saying that their other services will work even better with more people doing this.  This isn't just altruistic.  The reason for it is because you're already on their network, so the end point protections and the traffic routing are much easier to handle.  While this is great for the average user, if it were to be reaching a critical mass, it would essentially be making telling people who want websites that they need to use cloudflare as their host or they'll be seen as a lot slower to folks.

 

Still, there are a lot worse things in the world, and I don't know that even with this kind of help VPNs will reach critical mass (especially, just theirs) in the mainstream market, so the fear in there is highly unlikely to actually happen.

 

1.1.1.1 as DNS has proven to be quite good for me though, and I run a local DNS server on my network anyway, so beyond the first hit, nothing will be slower anyway.  Now just to get support for DNS over HTTPS or TLS in major BIND installs, to add the next layer of privacy from ISPs.

[Teddy07]

 

What is the point for cloudflare to even provide a DNS? It only costs them money

[Aimi]

I wonder how this will compare to "proper" VPNs...
Also, is this going to be mobile only?

[justpoet]

29 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

 

What is the point for cloudflare to even provide a DNS? It only costs them money

You can read about that here, from when they announced that product previously.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/dns-resolver-1-1-1-1/

[Doobeedoo]

Interesting really. I mean it's like everyone should have VPN these days... I'll see how this one goes. I've been using their 1.1.1.1 DNS so far working mostly well. 

[S w a t s o n]

14 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't like all the control Cloudflare is getting. They already run quite a large portion of the internet websites and now they are getting control over end user connections too? No thanks. 

 

I also don't trust their promises made in regards to privacy. They haven't made anything to make me trust them, and since promises like these are just words with no way of verifying if it's true, I have a ton of reasons to distrust them. 

Disagree, they are basically leasing the 1.1.1.1 address from APNIC on the conditions they have stated.

 

https://labs.apnic.net/?p=1127

[Sauron]

17 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't like all the control Cloudflare is getting. They already run quite a large portion of the internet websites and now they are getting control over end user connections too? No thanks. 

 

I also don't trust their promises made in regards to privacy. They haven't made anything to make me trust them, and since promises like these are just words with no way of verifying if it's true, I have a ton of reasons to distrust them. 

You're right not to trust any company too much - but other than privacy concerns I don't see the harm in using this. It's a free VPN and if you ever find you don't want their service anymore you can easily change back to whatever DNS you were using.

[LAwLz]

8 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

Disagree, they are basically leasing the 1.1.1.1 address from APNIC on the conditions they have stated.

 

https://labs.apnic.net/?p=1127

As you might have noticed, that is just a statement from APNIC about why Cloudflare got the 1.1.1.1 adress for use with their DNS. It is completely unrelated to this new "WARP VPN" which probably won't even use the 1.1.1.1 adress for anything other than DNS. 

[S w a t s o n]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

As you might have noticed, that is just a statement from APNIC about why Cloudflare got the 1.1.1.1 adress for use with their DNS. It is completely unrelated to this new "WARP VPN" which probably won't even use the 1.1.1.1 adress for anything other than DNS. 

Ok but it's part of the 1.1.1.1 initiative they arent going to risk having that tank the main project.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

Ok but it's part of the 1.1.1.1 initiative they arent going to risk having that tank the main project.

Where did you read that? To me it seems like it's not related to 1.1.1.1 at all, other than the app happening to be named 1.1.1.1 (which in itself is kind of unrelated to why Cloudflare made the app). If it doesn't use that IP then it's unrelated. 

[S w a t s o n]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Where did you read that? To me it seems like it's not related to 1.1.1.1 at all, other than the app happening to be named 1.1.1.1 (which in itself is kind of unrelated to why Cloudflare made the app). If it doesn't use that IP then it's unrelated. 

It doesnt matter that it's "kind of unrelated" even though it's definitely related. It being in the app called 1.1.1.1 means if they got shit for it, it would look bad on the service as whole, stop trying to act like these are so disparate. It's in the same app!!!!! The app existed before, they are adding this to it, how much more clear could it be

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

It doesnt matter that it's "kind of unrelated" even though it's definitely related. It being in the app called 1.1.1.1 means if they got shit for it, it would look bad on the service as whole, stop trying to act like these are so disparate. It's in the same app!!!!! The app existed before, they are adding this to it, how much more clear could it be

Cloudflare got the IP 1.1.1.1 from APNIC for the purposes of running a DNS service. In return there is some research being done for monitoring and testing DNS stuff. That's where the involvement with APNIC ends. 

 

Cloudflare then created an app called 1.1.1.1 which changes the DNS settings on your phone, so that mobile users thst don't want to change their settings can easily enable the use of the 1.1.1.1 DNS. 

The DNS server(s) with the IP 1.1.1.1 is different from the app called 1.1.1.1. One is an IP, and the other one is just an app. APNIC doesn't have anything to do with the app portion, only the IP the server uses. 

 

What is happening here is that Cloudflare is using their DNS changing app called 1.1.1.1 to also enable a VPN which is most likely not related at all to their DNS service which has the IP 1.1.1.1.

[RejZoR]

1.1.1.1 app works as a VPN proxy (while only affecting DNS traffic and not actual data transfers), because no mobile OS supports setting of DNS servers without being rooted and hacked to bits. It's the easiest way to use specific DNS this way.