Internet infrastructure and security provider Cloudflare has launched a new DNS (domain name system) service called 1.1.1.1, which claims to be quicker and more private. The company says that it will never sell users’ data or use it for targeted ads, and will delete logs in 24 hours. DNS service is an essential part of the internet, converting URLs like “Medianama.com” to numbered addresses, which can be read and understood by machines. OpenDNS and GoogleDNS are two other major such services. DNS inherently is unencrypted so it leaks data to anyone who's monitoring the network connection. Internet service providers can often track and record what websites a user visits using its network. Cloudflare says that it will restrict that information. The company’s director of engineering Olafur Gudmundsson, explains how that is done. The DNS service does not store users’ IP address, only using query names for things that improve DNS resolver performance. Cloudflare says it doesn’t store any information that identifies an end user. It has hired auditing firm KPMG to audit its code and practices annually and publish a public report on its privacy practice. Cloudflare claims that 1.1.1.1 is 28% faster than its competitors. Comparison website DNSPerf ranks 1.1.1.1 as the fastest DNS resolver when querying non-Cloudflare customers (averaging around 14ms globally). The company intends to make quicker, for which it says it is building data centres all over the globe to reduce the distance (i.e. latency) from users to content. “Eventually we want everyone to be within…
