My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

Re:My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answeri... by cwkoss on Friday February 15, 2019 @02:10PM (#19173757)

There's no reason "use only hardcoded DNS" couldn't be user configurable, for all the benefit with none of the costs.

Well... all of the benefit to the user. Google doesn't get to use your DNS requests to sell ads.

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Re:My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answeri... by kllrnohj on Friday February 15, 2019 @07:57PM (#19176254)

> Well... all of the benefit to the user. Google doesn't get to use your DNS requests to sell ads.

How do you envision this working on the product in question? When are you ever making arbitrary DNS lookups in a Chromecast?

Seriously take the tinfoil hat off for a minute and think rationally. Google owns the entirety of the software on the device, and all connections to & from it. There's nothing they gain in terms of data harvesting from hard-coding their DNS here. There is no user input in play at all here. What are they going to harvest from a device that only ever does DNS lookups for their own hostnames?

If this was happening on Chrome, or Android, or something where user input & interaction was actually a thing then sure. But this is a goddamn Chromecast. All it does is watch YouTube and similar. How in any way, shape, or form can those DNS requests in any way help sell ads?

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Re:My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answeri... by jimsmart on Sunday February 17, 2019 @09:21PM (#19188215)

In this instance, I think it's got less to do with harvesting data from the lookups, and more to do with ensuring advertising gets shown?

i.e. I suspect Google force their own DNS so that one cannot so easily use e.g. PiHole to filter out DNS lookups for servers that stream e.g. YouTube adverts.

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