The more geeky among you may be aware that Google offers a “free” DNS lookup service that tends to be more reliable than your Internet Provider. By adding in 8.8.8.8 as your domain server, your computer will ask google to lookup the “internet phone number” called the IP address. Loosely speaking, it is like calling 411 or 555-1212 to get a phone number.
Buck Sexton was discussing the FBI investigation into some server in Russia attempting to access a “Trump” server’s address over 2,000 times.
That only has two plausible explanations – DNS servers are logging every lookup they do and providing it to the FBI, or the NSA is logging every DNS lookup by looking at all internet traffic.
A Russian server doing a DNS lookup means absolutely nothing. It doesn’t indicate that any actual contact was made, why contact was made, and any actual context. The Internet is by design open – web servers offer up content to any computer that requests it. If the KGB decides to read America loves Sporks, that proves nothing about my intent.
I recall when Google made this known… my reaction was: “spycraft & data mining.”
There is NO way I would default to their DNS server, and I cannot comprehend why ‘network professionals’ are using it in configurations. “Fish see the bait, not the hook.”
Occasionally, I ‘ping’ that IP# when setting up clients, because it is easy to remember.
I dislike when the ISP redirects a failed DNS search to their captive search engine page. It also is less likely to get errors. Google is being very aggressive at trying to block rogue domains that are downloading malware, phishing, etc… I’m not really fond of the situation, but Google pretty much knows more about me than I know about myself already, like my fondness for vietnamese cashew shelling machines
Yes, both of our ISP’s do that (Xfinity in AZ and Charter in MI). They offer a way to opt-out of the redirects, but it requires some digging to change the config. I doubt most people are aware of it.