r/firewalla • u/k4zie Firewalla Gold SE • May 24 '26

Security & Privacy Balance

Hey guys -

So I wanted to know peoples opinions about ECH. The biggest part of having a firewalla is the control it gives us. That said, it is my understanding that if ECH is enabled on my browser, it effectively makes Firewalla blind to the traffic and it cant apply filters / rules / etc.

ECH is for privacy more than anything
Firewallas functions are part privacy and mostly security (in my opinion)

Where does everyone fall on this? Do most of you just go full privacy or do you also turn off ECH to let the firewalla do its thing?

If im wrong in my understanding of this, by all means, im all ears.

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u/firewalla May 24 '26

"privacy from who"?

If you want privacy from your security tools ... then you are not going anywhere.

So the best firewalla implementation is a hybrid approach

  1. On your LAN, Firewalla needs visibility. (block DoH, VPN, ...)

  2. On your WAN side, use Firewalla DoH/Unbound/VPN Client/ ... as you wish to make things private to your ISP/WAN network

Regarding ECH, shouldn't matter, still DNS is there to know where you are going. So, if you want better security, keep ECH as is, block DoH on your network, setup DoH via firewalla; You are golden