How Much Do You Trust Your Browser? Are They Search Engines or Ad Platforms?

In September 2019, Mozilla announced that its Firefox browser will start using the DNS over the HTTPS (DoH) protocol. One the other hand, Google began to test DoH and officially started using it in October. As a background, it is good to understand that there are several channels through which internet traffic operates all over the world that are backed by multiple structures, controlled by ISPS and enterprise systems.

The power of these protocols and the web as a whole has been in the decentralized system of global servers that control the ever-swelling amount of internet traffic. Multiple servers achieve redundancy and eradicate single points of failure. The decentralized process enables many users to use the web without having just a few entities own the routes for the internet’s traffic.

Companies that offer these underlying services run the transport layer that stabilizes the web. They act as navigators of web traffic from consumers to endpoint providers. These protocols moderate cybersecurity threats for web traffic by installing cybersecurity tools, detecting and mitigating malware, and botnet attacks. They also utilize site blockers authorized by governments for learning institutions and parental controls on home networks.

DoH was designed to encrypt web-lookup traffic as part of a new privacy setting and primarily alters how traffic circulates on the internet. Under DoH, the Chrome or Firefox browser will dispatch all search traffic to a preferred DNS resolver by default, not by the user’s request. This improves the browser’s knowledge of a user’s preferences.

Besides, it obscures details of the web traffic, breaking many of the Domain Name System (DNS) based controls around malware and tracking, which are no longer visible or detectable to the network operator passing the traffic directly to Google (for Chrome), or Cloudflare (for Firefox).

Decentralized internet protocols, like Cyber, act as trusted platforms where data is fully owned by users, and the governing rules are permanent, excluding third parties from the cycle. Cyber is a decentralized supercomputer for answers- a relevance machine- designed with the help of go-IPFS and cosmos-SDK.

Cyber offers a protocol for verifiable communication between consensus computers on relevance. It enables programmable semantics and is built on a simple idea of content-based data graphs, created by web3-agents via cyberlinks – a simple, yet a robust semantic base for laying an analytical model of the universe.  

The Impacts of the Re-engineering

The re-engineering by Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers will change the architectural structure of how their users resolve web queries making the browser the top of the pyramid rather than then traditional endpoint.

This implies that Google and Mozilla want to make network operators, like internet service providers (ISPs), “dumb” channels whose work will be to transmit and receive encrypted data that only the Google browser, Chrome, or the Firefox browser served up by Cloudflare will be able to view. 

There are major concerns around modifying the way traffic flows from the current decentralized-by-design manner to a company-based, centralized process that directs consumers’ web queries to a particular search engine. Naturally, browsers are meant to serve up ads to users, not to track or filter traffic for security purposes.

This change to the normal process of internet traffic will improve the browsers’ consumer data collection and raise security problems concerning the operation of the network. Google views the changes to its Chrome browser and Android OS as a means to centralize all traffic and have it pass through their protocol first. This ensures that it operates under Google’s control, shifting from Google’s search engine to the next terminus, the real web address a user wants to access.

Security concerns originate from the fact that DoH, in its current state, disables many cybersecurity tools on user devices. Because web query traffic goes directly to the application layer of a particular browser via the preferred path of the browser entity, not the choice of the business IT system or ISP, the monitoring filters on ISPs or business internet servers will no longer view the DNS query traffic. DoH-based encryption implies that only the browser sees the traffic, bypassing standard security management tools.

This plan has network operators worried about what will be affected, altered, or broken once this change is fully implemented. What are the trade-offs? What a certain group calls “surveillance” is what another group calls ad traffic for revenue. DNS was meant to be a decentralized protocol for efficiency. Now its founders are concerned about concentrating so much traffic via an edge provider’s browser.

Conclusion

Permitting a few entities to have control over more internet traffic by changing how users request and receive information could be a game-changer for the whole system. This is the opportune moment to embrace Web 3.0 and decentralized protocols, like Cyber. A decentralized web and decentralized protocol ensure that users have a complete ownership and control of their information and enjoy the security of encryption. Information will only be shared on permission or case-by-case basis.