To understand why, you’ll need to know a bit about DNS.
What Are DNS Servers?
DNS stands for “Domain Name System”.
DNS servers match domain names to their associated IP addresses.
your machine then connects to the IP address and retrieves the right web page for you.
The Domain Name System (DNS) underpins the web we use every day.
It works transparently in the background, converting human-readable website names into computer-readable numerical IP addresses.
DNS does this by looking up that information on a system of linked DNS servers across the Internet.
However, different DNS servers can behave differently in terms of speed and security.
The DNS servers you use are likely provided by your Internet service provider (ISP).
What are Domain Names and IP Addresses?
Domain names are the human-readable website addresses we use every day.
For example, Google’s domain name is google.com.
However, your machine doesn’t understand where “google.com” is.
Behind the scenes, the Internet and other networks use numerical IP addresses.
One of the IP addresses used by Google.com is 172.217.0.142.
We use google.com instead of 172.217.0.142 because addresses like google.com are more meaningful and easier for us to remember.
IP addresses are also known to change, but the DNS servers keep up with that new information.
Like a phone book, DNS matches human-readable names to numbers that machines can more easily understand.
Behind the scenes, the malicious DNS server has pointed you to a different IP address.
To avoid this problem, ensure that you’re running good antivirus and anti-malware apps.
You should also watch for certificate error messages onencrypted (HTTPS) websites.
However, you don’t have to.
Instead, you canuse DNS servers run by a third party.
Two of the most popularthird-party DNS serversareOpenDNSandGoogle Public DNS.
OpenDNS also provides optional website filtering.
