Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
A new study has been published that attempts to benchmark the effectiveness of several popular and free third-party Domain Name Service (DNS) providers to see how effective they are at blocking 100 malware and phishing websites (whittled down from an original list of 41,000 to reduce the risk from false positives). The results make for an interesting read.
For context. DNS providers typically convert Internet Protocol (IP) addresses into a human-readable form and back again (e.g. 123.56.32.1 to exampleofafakedomain.co.uk). Most such services tend to be provided automatically by UK broadband ISPs or mobile network operators, thus operating seamlessly in the background, without you ever really being aware.
However, it’s also possible to replace the DNS from your broadband or mobile provider with one from a third-party service, which is often as simple as changing a couple of server IP addresses on your device or router. A good third-party DNS will give you better performance, additional security filtering for bad sites and may help you to avoid DNS related bugs that your ISP can sometimes experience. In addition, they can be used to circumvent DNS level web blocking / filtering enforced by your ISP.