Privacy policy
A plain-language account of exactly what TestsDns collects, what it doesn't, and why — because a DNS tool that respects your privacy should say so clearly.
What does TestsDns collect?
Almost nothing. The browser speed test runs entirely on your device and stores no history of your results. There are no accounts, no tracking cookies, and no logging of the domains you look up or your full IP address.
The short version
- No accounts, no sign-up, no passwords.
- No tracking cookies, and nothing in your browser's local storage unless you choose to export results.
- The DNS speed test runs client-side; your results never leave your device unless you actively export or share them.
- We never see or store your browsing history, the domains you resolve, or your full IP address.
- An optional Cloudflare edge test and event counters keep only rounded, aggregated, non-identifying statistics, retained for a limited time.
- The four DNS error pages run a diagnostic automatically on load and keep one aggregated row per run — the day, your network operator, a country code, and the check results. No IP address, and no record of what you were trying to reach.
- We do not sell data. There is nothing of value to a data buyer here — we simply don't collect it.
The browser DNS speed test
When you run the test at /dns-speed-test, your browser sends the DNS lookups directly to each resolver's own DNS-over-HTTPS endpoint and times the responses locally. This computation happens entirely on your device — we don't operate a server in the middle of it, and we don't receive a copy of your results. The numbers exist only in your browser's memory for that session. If you close the tab or reload the page, they're gone, unless you deliberately export or share your results yourself. See the methodology page for the full technical detail of how the measurement works.
No accounts, no cookies
TestsDns does not require or offer user accounts, so there is no email address, password, or profile to store. We do not set tracking or advertising cookies. If we ever add optional, cookieless Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand aggregate traffic (for example, how many people visit a page in a day), it does not use cookies or any persistent client identifier, does not fingerprint your device, and reports only anonymous, site-wide totals — never anything tied to an individual visitor or session.
The optional edge test and event counters
Some resolvers can't be measured directly from a browser, so we offer an optional test that runs from a Cloudflare edge location instead of your device. When you choose to run it, we do not store raw results per visitor. Instead, a small counters database records only coarse, aggregated rows — for example: which provider was tested, a rounded median latency, a success percentage, which Cloudflare data center (colo) answered, and a broad country-level location, tagged to the day. There is no field for your IP address, your device, your specific location, or anything else that identifies you individually, and these aggregate rows are kept for roughly 30 days before being cleared.
The diagnostic on the DNS error pages
Four pages on this site — the ones covering DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN, ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED, DNS server not responding, and SERVFAIL — run a short set of DNS checks from your browser so the page can describe what your own connection is doing instead of explaining the error in the abstract. This one is worth calling out separately for two reasons: unlike the edge test, it starts automatically when the page loads rather than waiting for you to press anything, and the row it writes identifies the network operator you are connected through, which is more specific than the country-level location described above. The checks themselves are ordinary DNS-over-HTTPS lookups sent from your browser to public resolvers, the same as the speed test.
When the checks finish, one row is written to a separate diagnostics table. That row holds the
day; the ASN and the name of the organisation that operates your network (for example
AS15169 and Google LLC — an internet provider, not a person); a
two-letter country code; the four check results (whether a known-good name resolved, whether a
name that should not exist got an answer, whether DNSSEC validation appeared to happen, and what
public resolvers said); and which of the four error pages the check ran on. Those last two fields
are the whole point — they let us build a picture of DNS behaviour per network over time.
There is no field for your IP address, no field for the site you were trying to reach, and no session, cookie, or visitor identifier, so there is nothing to join rows together by and no way to reconstruct one person's runs. The ASN and operator name are stamped server-side from the connection itself rather than read from anything the page sends, so a row cannot be attributed to someone else's network. These rows are deleted after roughly 30 days, on the same schedule as the edge-test rows. If you would rather not run the check at all, disabling JavaScript on those pages stops it — the written guidance on each page is served without it.
Rate limiting
To keep the edge test available and stop automated abuse, requests are rate-limited. The rate limiter's key is a one-way cryptographic hash of your IP address, not the address itself, and that hashed key is stored only briefly — long enough to enforce a short time window — before it expires automatically. We never store or log your raw IP address as part of this process.
Third parties
Running the browser test sends DNS-over-HTTPS queries directly from your browser to the public DNS resolvers you choose to test (for example Cloudflare or Google) — each resolver operator handles that request under its own privacy policy, which is outside our control. Our own infrastructure, including the optional edge test, runs on Cloudflare's network, and Cloudflare processes requests in accordance with its own privacy practices as our infrastructure provider. We do not share, rent, or sell any data to advertisers, data brokers, or any other third party — there is no sale of data, full stop, because we don't collect the kind of individual-level data that would be sellable.
On the What is my IP page, your browser automatically contacts
ipv4.icanhazip.com and ipv6.icanhazip.com (both operated by Cloudflare)
on page load, solely to learn which IPv4 and IPv6 address your connection has — it is the only way a
browser can see both protocols at once. That same page also looks up network details for your own IP
address through ip-api.com. TestsDns stores and logs none of it.
Children's privacy
TestsDns is a general-audience technical tool that does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children, because it does not collect personal information from any visitor by design.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Meaningful changes — such as adding a new form of data collection — will be reflected here before they take effect. Continued use of the site after an update means you accept the revised policy; see our terms of use for the rest of the rules governing the site.
Contact
Questions about this policy or how TestsDns handles data can be sent to [email protected].