zlacker

>>lolind+(OP)
Maybe they need it to route the traffic to the right CDN? That kinda would make sense.

While I'm very privacy conscious, I don't really see the benefit to hiding my region in the DNS request. Because the very next step after the DNS is my browser making a request to their webserver, at which time they will have my actual complete IP anyway.

>>wkat42+s8
I've talked to some people working for the .nl TLD. They collect logs on DNS requests for every .nl domain to mine data about phishing websites and online scams. They're not using the EDNS information as far as I know (that would be very very illegal) and I don't know what the introduction of the GDPR has done to their research, but TLDs not limited by privacy laws such as American companies can do whatever they want.

It's not just the website's DNS server that received your subnet information; it's every single location in the chain of DNS resolvers. That includes TLD servers run by data mining companies. Does Verisign need to know that 2001:2345:6789::abcd is looking for news.ycombinator.com?

With caching in place these methods of data gathering aren't all-encompassing, but if you visit some new or uncommon domains you'll be more likely to become part of the dataset.