EU Commission planning own DNS service DNS4EU

The EU Commission is jumping into the Internet landscape, by providing its own DNS resolver. The basic aim is to create an alternative to the dominant public servers. However, the use of the new systems does not sound very attractive for many.

According to the Commission’s assessment, users in the EU would increasingly fall back on a few public providers – this infers to Google and Cloudflare. For users it seems true, who look for a DNS server themselves; most simply use the service of their respective provider anyway.

An EU-owned DNS service that does not allow large U.S. companies to study user behavior sounds quite good at first, but there is a catch. The EU Commission sees the project as part of its cybersecurity strategy. And this strategy also contains points that will be less in the interest of most users.

Better Security and Features?

Because for the EU Commission, the issue of network blocking, which has been coming up again and again for years, is still not off the table. The new DNS service is to include filtering options to hide content that does not comply with the law from the eyes of users.

However, the DNS service is presumably to come with other security installations. Among other things, there will be phishing filters to protect users from being directed to fraudulent websites. And malware is also to be actively thwarted, for which cooperation with various CERTs is planned.

The EU service will be operated by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) under the name DNS4EU. It’s unclear at the moment when it will be launched and under which IP address it will be accessible, but it has been announced that contacts are being sought with providers and browser manufacturers in order to publicize the possibilities for use among users.