Summary
Everyone’s biggest question about the Domain Name System concerns speed. What is the fastest DNS provider? They’re often asking the wrong question. Moving your DNS provider is often about bigger questions and issues than speed. Most DNS providers will deliver speeds within milliseconds of each other, regardless, depending on your location.
Two things matter more when it comes to DNS: location and privacy. And that’s why I moved from Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 to Quad9’s 9.9.9.9, a DNS provider based in Switzerland that does both things at once.
It’s not the DNS address that matters
It’s the location
DNS providers are based worldwide, with networks spanning each continent, designed to help resolve your requests as fast as possible. But that doesn’t mean they’re spared from the laws of a specific jurisdiction when it comes to law enforcement and privacy, making the decision about where to base operations incredibly important.
That’s why in 2021, Quad9 moved its headquarters from the sunny climes of California to the mountains, lakes, and snow of Switzerland, specifically landing in Zurich, and reorganizing as a Swiss foundation.
Switching jurisdictions from the US to Switzerland had one vital impact: Quad9’s business, network, data, and more moved to the oversight of Switzerland’s Federal Act on Data Protection, with the protections of the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner. Perhaps most importantly of all, moving to Switzerland extends Swiss privacy laws to every Quad9 user worldwide, no matter their citizenship or location.
That’s a huge change in status, and an enormous privacy boon for anyone using Quad9, especially if they were previously using a US-based DNS provider, or any other tech service for that matter.
Compare that to a US-domiciled resolver. The 2018 CLOUD Act lets US authorities compel any US company to produce data in its possession or control, regardless of which country the servers physically sit in. Server location is a red herring; what matters is whose law the operator answers to.
Quad9’s company structure also protects your privacy
A foundation is different, especially under Swiss law
In addition, Quad9 didn’t just jump on a plane from the US to Europe. It fully changed its company structure and became a completely different organization.
Instead of working as a for-profit company, Quad9 morphed into a non-profit foundation under Articles 80 to 89 of the Swiss Civil Code, which comes with significant protections as well as specific constraints on its commercial activities.
For example, Articles 80-89 of the Swiss Civil Code define foundations as entities that exist for non-profit, public-defined benefit purposes, meaning their core identities of user privacy and security are ingrained by law, rather than just a handwave toward these core functions.
Cloudflare isn’t bad, and it isn’t breaching your privacy
But it’s based in the US, and is a publicly traded stock
Right, so with what I’ve written here so far, you’re probably thinking Cloudflare is a horrific privacy issue, and you should immediately sever ties. Well, that’s not what’s happening here.
I rate Cloudflare DNS highly, and its privacy record is good. It’s passed multiple privacy audits and always passes with flying colors, and in a world where companies beholden to stockholders regularly fall at the first hurdle, Cloudflare does a great job. In fact, it partnered with big-four auditing firm KPMG to conduct a yearly privacy audit; such is the company’s confidence that it’ll keep passing the bar.
But it does operate under US jurisdiction, which comes with all of the normal scrutiny from TLA security agencies that you’d expect. That doesn’t mean that Cloudflare is about to sell you out as fast as it can or that 1.1.1.1 is secretly harvesting your browsing. It’s more about how they could be compelled, what metadata might exist, and if that could change without warning.
There are other considerations, too, with regard to both Cloudflare and Quad9. In 2021, Sony Music obtained an injunction demanding Quad9 block DNS resolution for a site distributing pirated music. Quad9 fought the injunction for two years before it finally lost. But it appealed, and two years later, in 2023, the Higher Regional Court of Dresden ruled that DNS resolvers do not play a “central role” in the publication of copyrighted material.
That’s not all, either.
Both focus on copyright issues, but they clearly show how courts on both sides of the Atlantic judge infrastructure providers’ obligations and exposure.
Quad9
- OS
- Any
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- Free
- Developer(s)
- Quad9
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- DNS Provider Switch to Quad9 to boost your DNS privacy Quad9 isn’t a perfect privacy solution, but if you’re looking for those marginal privacy gains, it’s the right solution. There is also malware filtering, which puts Quad9 up there among the best DNS providers that aren’t Cloudflare or Google, along with Quad9’s long-held stance that its “infrastructure does not store any personal data about its users.” The switch doesn’t really make your internet feel any different to use, but everything behind the scenes is just that bit more secure.