Swedish privacy company Mullvad has announced that it is shutting down its public encrypted DNS (DoH) servers, ending a service it has operated since 2022. The company said the move reflects the fact that the servers are largely redundant for its core audience: anyone using Mullvad VPN already has encrypted traffic and queries handled by the VPN's internal DNS. Outside of the VPN tunnel, however, the public servers have served as a standalone privacy service, something Mullvad now intends to provide by proxy, directing users to the Quad9 Foundation instead. In the announcement, Mullvad framed the decision as a matter of focus rather than retreat, arguing that running a privacy-focused public DNS resolver is “a highly specialized undertaking” in which Quad9 is the undisputed leader. Rather than duplicating the nonprofit foundation's efforts only partially, the company says it will funnel the resources previously spent on its own resolvers into financially supporting Quad9. The move echo...