If you try to search a single word in the address bar it's sent to a DNS server. If you enter more words, it doesn't leak.

I noticed it a long ago, I'm just not sure it's reproducible on other systems. Maybe it's only because of my settings.

Comments

Rambler wrote on February 19, 2021 at 3:09 PM

Yep, it does this. I just tested and confirmed.

07:07:21: query[A] test from 209.xx.xx.xx
07:07:21: config test is NODATA-IPv4
07:07:21: query[AAAA] test from 209.xx.xx.xx
07:07:21: config test is NODATA-IPv6

Then it went to "test.com" automatically.

RandomlyGeneratedUsername OP wrote on February 19, 2021 at 3:57 PM (edited on February 19, 2021 at 4:50 PM)

Just tried it with a new profile. It leaks the word and opens a search page. I'm not sure why it opens test.com automatically for you.

It's ESR 78.

spc50 wrote on February 20, 2021 at 1:18 AM

This has been a 'feature' in Firefox and likely other browsers.

I would test but I am lazy right now and I disable and mutate browsers to pretend they could be privacy adhering (in reality they are lying, cheating, c*nts who report to everyone whatever).

Chromium just recently cleaned up their version of this stupidity:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/04/chromium_dns_traffic_drop/

Chromium cleans up its act – and daily DNS root server queries drop by 60 billion That’s a 41 per cent traffic relief for all concerned Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Thu 4 Feb 2021 // 08:01 UTC The Google-sponsored Chromium project has cleaned up its act, and the result is a marked decline in queries to DNS root servers.

As The Register reported in August 2020, Chromium-based browsers generate a lot of DNS traffic as they try to determine if input into their omnibox is a domain name or a search query.

Verisign engineers Matthew Thomas and Duane Wessels examined the resulting traffic and reached the conclusion that it accounted for up to 60 billion DNS queries every day.

Wessels has since penned a new post that went unreported when it appeared on January 7 – the day after the US Capitol riot – but was today resurfaced by APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia-Pacific region.

In the post he says the Chromium team redesigned its code to stop junk DNS requests, and released the update in Chromium 87.