A faster, more private internet?

I’ve always been a little uneasy about how much information I am required to share with my ISP.  Optimum is not on the top of my list of people that I trust to keep my data safe and secure.  For example, their privacy page’s section entitled How We Use Subscriber Information has this lovely phrase:

• ensure that you receive information about products and services that may be of interest to you;

Which I read as “We will totally sell your browsing information to anyone that might want to sell you things”

So, I was very intrigued by the new service from Cloudflare called 1.1.1.1 which promises “browsing a faster, more private internet.”

Here’s a quote from their site:

Unfortunately, by default, DNS is usually slow and insecure. Your ISP, and anyone else listening in on the Internet, can see every site you visit and every app you use — even if their content is encrypted. Creepily, some DNS providers sell data about your Internet activity or use it target you with ads.

We think that’s gross. If you do too, now there’s an alternative: 1.1.1.1

via 1.1.1.1 — the Internet’s Fastest, Privacy-First DNS Resolver

They make the statement that “We will never sell your data or use it to target ads. Period.”  They also claim to be faster for the DNS lookup, and that seems to be born out in independent tests.  

I decided to try it out.  Installation is easy and the instructions can be found here:  https://1.1.1.1/#setup-instructions

It just takes a few seconds to change and doesn’t need any software to be installed.  Everything seems to work just fine so far.  In fact, I’m writing this using the new setup.

What’s in it for Cloudflare? You can read more about that here:  https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/