Quietly embedded in things like Firefox are settings automatically turned on to “protect” you from the big bad internet. CIRA Candian Shield is one of these efforts – they “want to make sure that you and your family are well protected.” Now there is a laugh. If that was really true why would they not stop all the fake scam calls and texts instead? Maybe even create a country law to allow the same thing Quebec has – a method of turning off access to your credit file to prevent fraud. Nah, instead its this – a service you likely know nothing about which is stealthily embedded and turned on without you realizing it for your own good.
It sounds great, protect you from malware and malicious web sites, whats the harm in that? The reality?
DNS is short for domain name lookup. Basically everything you do online has to be looked up and translated to IP addresses for the actual communication. What this “service” does is act as your DNS provider, filtering out whatever they believe is a threat which could, in fact, be as harmless as a foreign news article critical of the Canadian government response to something. Furthermore, all sites you visit are now conveniently logged with the government. Swell. The other aspect of this is that they can simply remove content at will or redirect it. All of this is trivial as because DNS is inherently a lookup service.
Now you likely wouldn’t set this up on your own, so it is embedded and turned on by default in things like Firefox and the like. Trust us. We’re the government. Although the whole thing sounds good, there are already many services doing the same kind of thing. No need for the Canadian government to intervene. Google, Cloudfare, OpenDNS, and many others offer similar services free of charge without tracking everything you do. The Canadian version never indicates it doesn’t track you, just that it won’t sell your data to third parties. So they can share it with third parties, just not sell it.
If your comfortable with your government knowing everything you surf for, leave it on. Otherwise, turn it off. The same services can be used by configuring your router to use Cloudfare or OpenDNS without the tracking issues. Interestingly, most people are likely unaware this activity is being done and many would not have consented had they known, but like all things – read the fine print which no one seems to do anymore either.
I for one, do not see the need for a taxpayer funded DNS service to monitor and control what I can find on the internet. It reminds me of China and Russia and it seems Canada will soon be next.