Are there any privacy benefits to hosting a DNS server on a VPS that you can then use as your DNS server on your mobile devices?

My thoughts are that it would bypass using your telecom’s dns or Google/Apple or even your VPNs DNS. In addition you can set it up to block trackers and ads, which is often hard to block natively on a phone system-wide.

To take it a step further, you could run the VPS through a paid VPN in addition to using it as a DNS.

What do you think? Has anybody tried this before and if so, got any tips?

  • TyberBeiEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Secure and privacy respecting DNS providers do exist. I use Quad9 on all my devices, including mobile. Adguard have DNS settings you can use that does everything you are wanting to do (secure, private, adblocking, malicious content blocker).

    Theres also NextDNS if you wanted to throw them a couple bucks a month to do all the same thing. In theory, youd be doing the same thing that others are offering for free.

    https://www.quad9.net/service/service-addresses-and-features

    https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html

    https://nextdns.io/

    With nextDNS being US based, it might be subjected to information requests being apart of the 5 eyes.

    But i digress, i think the hassle and maintenance of a VPS purely for DNS requests probably dont quite add up to the ease of using adguard or quad9. And its easy to change the DNS server on mobile (android at least, not sure on apple) in the connection settings, so you arent having to set up a tunnel specifically to rout your DNS requests.