Note that the last option should not be used on devices which are directly connected to the Internet. This option is safe if your Pi-hole is located within your local network, i.e. protected behind your router, and you have not forwarded port 53 to this device. In virtually all other cases you have to make sure that your Pi-hole is properly firewalled.

Note that enabling these two options may increase your privacy slightly, but may also prevent you from being able to access local hostnames if the Pi-hole is not used as DHCP server

Validate DNS replies and cache DNSSEC data. When forwarding DNS queries, Pi-hole requests the DNSSEC records needed to validate the replies. Use Google, Norton, DNS.WATCH or Quad9 DNS servers when activating DNSSEC. Note that the size of your log might increase significantly when enabling DNSSEC. A DNSSEC resolver test can be found here.

Conditional Forwarding

If not configured as your DHCP server, Pi-hole won't able to determine the names of devices on your local network. As a result, tables such as Top Clients will only show IP addresses.

One solution for this is to configure Pi-hole to forward these requests to your home router, but only for devices on your home network. To configure this we will need to know the IP address of your router and the name of your local network.

Note: The local domain name must match the domain name specified in your router, likely found within the DHCP settings.