What does this privacy warning mean and why is my WiFi so crap?

[donkeyhottie]

Our WiFI has been rubbish recently, keeps dropping and sometimes losing connection.

A friend visited last week and her new phone connected to our wife without her having to put in the password.

I've also noticed that there's now a privacy warning when I checked the connection on my phone.

I am not tech savvy. Can anyone shed some light on what's going on and how I can sort it? Thanks!

"Blocking encrypted DNS" is the key part of that. DNS is the Domain Name Service, which translates human readable names like "google.com" to numeric addresses like "142.250.187.238".
Back in the day these requests to do the translation would be done in "clear text", so it was easy for other devices to scan network traffic and see that you were looking at something like an STD clinic that you wouldn't want people to know you were looking at.
Encrypted DNS makes that information harder to read and enhances your privacy. It also makes it harder to spoof your internet service by sending a fake answer that directs you to a malicious web site.

Your friends new phone connecting without entering the password probably just means that the login details were copied from her old phone to the new phone during setup, or they might be stored on her Google/Apple account.

Who is your ISP and are you using the router/modem they provided or have you got other kit (Wi-Fi extenders, power line adaptors, etc).

You've got a series of questions there.

First, dropping and losing connection may be a wifi problem, or it may be a problem with your internet connection. Try looking at the logs to see what the issue is, or looking at any lights etc. on the front of your router when you have an outage. They may help. It may help to reboot the whole lot.

Your friend connecting without a password is probably down to her having it saved in a cloud account rather than the device, so it's been carried over to her new phone (assuming her old phone had access).

The encrypted DNS part isn't necessarily a problem. Devices are becoming more privacy savvy - so it's harder to see what you're searching for, as described above. This hiding of DNS does make it harder for your provider to implement parental controls etc., and it is likely a deliberate policy to block this traffic (I believe BT does this).