Layered Privacy: DNS, VPNs, and Browsers

In a recent privacy chat we kept coming back to the same practical question: on a phone, does it make sense to run a custom DNS and a VPN at the same time? Our May post "Privacy Tool Spotlight: DNS" showed why changing from your carrier’s DNS is usually a good idea. Better options can block malware, ads, and trackers while reducing what your provider sees. A Citizen Lab report called "Exposing AdFection: How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware" made the stakes clearer: some ads are no longer just annoying. We ran a few simple tests to see what combinations actually deliver. What is DNS?DNS works like the phonebook for the internet. When you type a website name such as google.com or youtube.com, DNS turns that name into a string of numbers (an IP address) that computers use to connect. Without DNS you would have to remember long numbers for every site. With it, you type a name and get there in a fraction of a second. It happens in the…