Secure your connection with Cloudfare’s free 1.1.1.1 VPN

The American Cloudfare is known for its DNS resolver for PC, and introduced the 1.1.1.1 app at the end of 2018. This app is said to be safe and not to share your data with third parties. Furthermore, the service claims that you surf faster than with the DNS resolver that is connected to your provider. In this article you can read everything about the 1.1.1.1 app.

1.1.1.1

Cloudflare may not be known to the mainstream public; not surprisingly, the company has little to do with consumers in many of its services. For example, it offers a service to protect servers against so-called DDoS attacks, by absorbing possible attacks with its own servers. Not enough for Cloudflare, as it turned out with the introduction of the 1.1.1.1 DNS in 2018, and the 1.1.1.2 and 1.1.1.3 DNS resolvers in 2020.

Such ‘DNS resolvers’ send your request to visit a particular website over the Internet. Normally, the router is set to your provider’s DNS, but it can see which sites a household visits and is authorized to store such data. Cloudflare has promised that its DNS services will not store any data. The disadvantage is that you have to set such a DNS yourself on your router, and with external networks – including your mobile network – you sometimes cannot set this yourself.

Warp VPN

That is one of the reasons for the existence of VPN services. A VPN service ensures that all data passes through a different IP address, and therefore also a different DNS resolver. In 2018, the internet giant launched its 1.1.1.1 app, which allowed Cloudflare to modify the DNS address of phones on demand. Later, the app was expanded with the Warp and Warp+ VPN services. The Warp VPN service is even free to use.

When opening the app, you preferably click on the hamburger menu at the top right (dashes). You will now arrive at the settings of 1.1.1.1. There you will then be given the choice of only 1.1.1.1 and below that the choice of 1.1.1.1 ‘with Warp’. With the first option you only use the DNS resolver; the second option, with Warp, gives you access to the VPN connection. Finally, you see that you can use Warp+, this is a faster variant of Warp.

Warp is not slow, by the way: in fact, in daily use I hardly notice that the speed when using the VPN is lower than the speed of the network without the VPN. If you want to squeeze out the last bit of speed, you can upgrade to Warp+ Unlimited – this costs 3.99 euros per month.

1.1.1.1 install

To install 1.1.1.1 you can go to the Play Store, as well as the iOS App Store. As indicated in the article, the service is free to use; you don’t need to create an account and there are no ads present in 1.1.1.1. After installing, click on the large switch in the middle of the application, and click ‘OK’ when prompted to enable the VPN (Virtual Private Network).

Compared to other VPN apps, Warp still lacks a number of features. Cloudflare does not allow the user to switch between countries and/or locations within the countries. If you want to watch content that is not available locally, then Warp from Cloudflare is unfortunately not the VPN service for you. What do you think of Warp VPN? Are you planning to use the free VPN app with 1.1.1.1 DNS functions? Let me know in the comments.