The UncensoredDNS project was started almost 7 years ago, back in November 2009. People were asking for recommendations for alternatives to their ISP's censored DNS servers.

Back then OpenDNS did NXDOMAIN redirection, an advertising trick where misspelled nonexistant domains are redirected to a search page with ads instead of returning an NXDOMAIN error. They also didn't have ipv6 or DNSSEC, both of which are mandatory on a modern DNS server, even back in 2009.

Even if Google DNS had existed back then I wouldn't have felt comfortable recommending them either. While they do run a stable, fast and largely uncensored service, I am not convinced that it is a good idea to hand over all your DNS lookups to Google.

All this prompted me to do something about the situation so I started UncensoredDNS with help from friends. I also give talks to explain why I am doing this, since people naturally have an easier time trusting a service if they know who is behind it.

The talk be a state-of-the-dns type thing, with some political but mostly technical content. The technical content will include statistics, background and status on the anycast project, dnscrypt, the openvpn project, the move to ansible, the new dns-over-http proposal, and more.

Thomas Steen Rasmussen

Thomas Steen Rasmussen (born 1979) is a system architect and Unix administrator with a preference for FreeBSD and a healthy interest in network and system security. Developer with experience in various languages, currently with a preference for Python, specifically Django. When I work with databases I prefer PostgreSQL. I care a lot about online freedom, IT politics and Internet legislation, which has inspired me to run uncensoreddns.org and hushfile.it in my sparetime, among other projects. Co-organizer of BornHack.