Privacy

A few days ago, Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare implemented widespread support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a privacy technology that aims to render web traffic surveillance futile. This means that site blocking implemented by ISPs will be rendered useless in most, if not all cases.

ECH is a newly proposed privacy standard that's been in the making for a few years. The goal is to increase privacy for Internet users and it has already gained support from Chrome , Firefox , Edge , and other browsers. Users can enable it in the settings, which may still be experimental in some cases.just

The main barrier to widespread adoption is that this privacy technology is a two-way street. This means that websites have to support it as well. Cloudflare has made a huge leap forward on that front by enabling it by default on all free plans, which currently serve millions of sites. Other subscribers can apply to have it enabled. Cloudflare writes in an announcement:

Cloudflare is a big proponent of privacy for everyone and is excited about the prospects of bringing this technology to life. Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) is a successor to ESNI and masks the Server Name Indication (SNI) that is used to negotiate a TLS handshake. This means that whenever a user visits a website on Cloudflare that has ECH enabled, no one except for the user, Cloudflare, and the website owner will be able to determine which website was visited.

If you're a website, and you care about users visiting your website in a fashion that doesn't allow any intermediary to see what users are doing, enable ECH today on Cloudflare

Tests conducted by TorrentFreak show that ISP blocking measures in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain were rendered ineffective.