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I know how domain name system (DNS) works a bit. But don't know if providers of public DNS like Google or Cloudflare can know my IP address.

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  • Lookup your IP in who.is. That's everything that DNS providers other than your recursive resolver know about you, unless you are running your own recursive resolver on site (hint, if you are asking this, you probably aren't).
    – user1937198
    Commented Jul 24, 2023 at 1:08
  • Why do i need to check my IP address info? who.is website shows a blank page when i check my IP address. So you mean DNS providers know my IP address and recursive DNS resolver knows the website name i visit? I know very basic about DNS.
    – user295767
    Commented Jul 24, 2023 at 2:42
  • Every IP address has associated metadata in the DNS whois system. For DNS providers other than your recursive resolver, that metadata is all they have. The resolver knows every domain you request, because as mentioned in the answer, you ask it how to find the domain.
    – user1937198
    Commented Jul 24, 2023 at 9:54
  • There's ODOH to split who knows your IP and who knows what domain you're querying blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns
    – Martheen
    Commented Aug 1, 2023 at 13:51

1 Answer 1

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If your system or application is setup to query a public DNS provider like Google (8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), then your system sends a request to their DNS server and expects an answer back. The latter requires that the DNS server knows where to send the answer to - hence it needs to know your public visible IP address.

If you use a VPN to connect to the DNS server then this public visible IP address is not the one given by your ISP though, but the one from your VPN provider. In this case the VPN provider needs to know the public IP given by your ISP though in order to send the traffic back.

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