If you own a .ca domain, you might already have a membership. Otherwise, it’s still a nice list of some Canadian businesses.
I’m scheduling out separate posts with a few of the ones that I thought were neat (ex. the Happy Tears card game)
If you own a .ca domain, you might already have a membership. Otherwise, it’s still a nice list of some Canadian businesses.
I’m scheduling out separate posts with a few of the ones that I thought were neat (ex. the Happy Tears card game)
CIRA is absolutely based, as always.
Don’t forget to switch your network config to their DNS over HTTPS servers for extra privacy from your ISP and anyone sniffing local traffic.
How does letting CIRA spy on me give me any additional privacy over my ISP?
You have to trust your DNS provider. If you don’t trust CIRA, don’t use them, but using DoH is better than the alternative.
I can tell you that CIRA is way more trustworthy than your ISP and won’t tip off the authorities for going to some high sea sites, like your ISP would.
Your DNS provider used to just be your ISP, but unfortunately Chrome and Firefox’s stupid DoH-by-default means an American company is your DNS provider, which is the worst possible option. (Chrome default’s to Google’s DNS servers - the company that makes money by tracking and selling ads. Firefox default’s to Cloudflare, which is the NSA’s dream.)
Those defaults make DoH worse for Canadians, so I can see an argument for using CIRA + DoH being better than the default.
However, in Canada, your ISP won’t tip off the authorities for you pirating anything. That’s complete FUD. If you’re going to make an argument that CIRA is more trustworthy than my ISP, you have to do better than that.
I will say that the privacy policy and terms of use for CIRA’s Canadian Shield DNS seem to be reasonable with regards to privacy. The main issue I see is that they both say they can change the terms at any time, with no notice to you, so basically they can do whatever the hell they want at any time in the future.
Vidéotron has definitely tipped off the authorities to our DNS activity at one point, we got a nasty letter from them saying they got told to tell us to stop visiting a certain website. I don’t think they do that anymore, but they once upon a time did.
Their DNS is also really slow to replicate, causing issues when toying with DNS records.
Besides, your ISP can also change the terms at any time.
I do agree with you regarding American DoH, but note that your Android phone most likely defaults to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as DNS servers, i.e. Google’s.
Are we talking about getting a nastygram because you were torrenting? Because Bittorrent just broadcast’s your IP to everyone in the swarm. Your ISP doesn’t have anything to do with that. Your ISP does have an obligation in Canada to forward the nastygram to you from the copyright owner’s lawyer though. Like you said though, I’m not sure that this actually still happens anymore. (how sure are you that it was just because you “visited a website”, which a DNS lookup isn’t even proof of?)
No, I got some of those more recently, they show you the IP address and the infringed copyright. This is one of the reasons to use a VPN.
Back maybe 10 years ago they would actually send a letter to tell you, you visited those websites, please refrain. It might have had to do with frequency as well.
Yikes, OK, thanks for sharing that