DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is a great new security and privacy standard for encrypting DNS requests. Lemme Explain…

Let’s say you’re an engineer and you want to send a confidential set of graphics to your attorney, complete with specs for a new patent application you want to file soon. So your lawyer emails you back: “Just click this link to my firm’s page and upload it there,” she writes. “That’s easiest for me.”

Fair enough. You trust her, so you send over the goods. There’s just one problem: That website might have looked legitimate, but it was actually a fake. You’ve been tricked into forking over valuable intellectual property to a total stranger in what’s known as a man-in-the-middle attack. Whoops.

To prevent these kinds of hoodwinks, “DNS over HTTPS,” also known as DoH, is a way to ensure that data traveling between your computer and a company’s server is encrypted, keeping middleman hackers out of the equation. DNS stands for Domain Name System and HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure.

This cybersecurity approach is being embraced by major browsers and websites, just not necessarily by default. You can enable DoH in Chrome, for instance, and even Facebook supports a move to more secure DNS.