Quad9: A Free DNS Service That Blocks Malware and Protects Your Privacy
An open DNS recursive service for free security and high privacy
Quad9 is a free, open DNS recursive service that replaces your default ISP or enterprise DNS configuration to block malicious hostnames in real time. Operated by the Swiss-based Quad9 Foundation, it leverages threat intelligence from over 25 providers to protect against malware, phishing, spyware, and botnets. With 670M+ daily blocks and 230+ resolver clusters in over 110 countries, Quad9 guarantees privacy by never logging IP addresses and is GDPR-compliant. No sign-up is required, and it's free to use for individuals and organizations.
Quad9 is the only large DNS resolver with a founding charter that includes privacy as a primary goal, and the Quad9 team is devoted to the concept of keeping personal data under the control of the end user.
- Habgdnv
Just a quick note for the unsuspecting:
I run two local DNSes, one recursive and one forwarding.
The forwarding one uses few services, like 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, 9.9.9.9, etc.
One day I noticed inconsistent responses and started investigating. Turns out that by default 9.9.9.9 have "protection" and for your safety will lie and return NXDOMAIN or something else, for some dangerous domains, taking into account their definition of "dangerous". I am not saying that this is bad, probably lots of non-HN people don't want to run their DNS or anything related and just want a tablet that works because they don't even have laptop. It just hit me hard because I did not expected filtering on these servers.
- greyface-
Sending every single query to a centralized third party is hard to square with "high privacy". I prefer to run my own local recursive resolver.
- LeoPanthera
In California, from Xfinity Cable, Google’s DNS consistently has the lowest latency.
From AT&T fiber, Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 is always the fastest, though Quad9 is a very close second.
It’s interesting that it’s different from different ISPs.
- Cider9986
quad9 is recommended by Privacy Guides. There's also other recommendations.
- jedberg
I've been meaning to switch my in-laws to Quad9 and just not mention it to them. They fall for too many scams, I'd love for those websites to just not work anymore.