There are many ways bad guys can attack and install unwanted programs on your computers. If you truly want to protect your PCs online, you must close these many avenues that someone can use to install malicious programs on your machines.

Whenever you purchase a new computer, your first task should always be installing firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware programs to protect your machines.

Some of the benefits of installing these programs:

  • Bad guys can’t easily install viruses, spyware or other malicious tools
  • Your privacy will be protected
  • Your important information will be secured and unauthorized users can’t get them
  • Your computer will run and perform better
  • The Internet will be fun
  • and many others benefits

You see, the above list is a good reason to put in place steps to protect your computers at home.

Even if you installed the best firewall, antivirus and spyware programs, there are other things you can do to increase your computer security even more.

This brief tutorial is going to show you how to use secure DNS systems to add another layer of security to your computers.

 

List of free and secure DNS providers

The Domain Name System (DNS) helps translate people-friendly names like facebook.com into IP addresses that computers can recognize. DNS plays a huge role when you’re using the Internet.

DNS is also vulnerable to attack and can be slow. If you want to improve your Internet experience, you may want to switch to alternative DNS providers that offer secure, fast and distributed DNS services.

Here’s a list of few of the providers that offered better DNS services than the ones issues to you from your ISP vendors.

Provider Primary DNS IP Secondary DNS IP
Google 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4
OpenDNS 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220
Comodo DNS 8.26.56.26 8.20.247.20
Norton DNS 199.85.126.30 199.85.127.30
     

 

That’s just a few. Do a search online for secure DNS providers and you may end of with more.

 

How to switch DNS providers in Ubuntu

To switch to one of the above providers for better security, open the terminal (Ctrl – Alt – T) and run the commands below.

sudo gedit /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf

 

Then add the line below into the file and save it.

supersede domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;

 

That’s it.

 

How to switch DNS providers in Windows

To do the same in Windows, go to your network adapters center and right-click on your primary adapter and select Properties

 

adapter-windows

 

Then select TCP/IPv4 and click Properties. Next, select the option to use the following DNS server addresses. Enter the primary and secondary IP addresses.

 

adapter-windows-1

 

Save it and you’re done.

This is how to switch to alternative DNS providers in Ubuntu and Windows computers.

Enjoy! And stay safe on the Internet