helping you stay protected in the digital age

There is an update to this post at the end of the original article!

I just read that OpenDNS is now offering a content filtering system based on DNS resolutions and the general public. Normally I’m not a fan of the general public (ever seen the public after their home team wins during a night game at some big stadium? ).

As soon as I’m done writing this post, our two DNS servers on our LAN (domain: “johndball.com”) will point to OpenDNS’ servers with content filter. Like I stated before, this is the PUBLIC doing the categorizing and not a team of highly trained monkeys working 24/7 on filtering the worst the Interwebs has to offer so I’ll probably just stick to Phishing and other malware-laden categories, maybe pron too since it would be hard to accidentally categorize a non-pron site as pornography… and if you do get this wrong then you need to go back to 7th grade health class.

Anywho, I don’t foresee any problems with this setup. I also said that when kicking around the idea of creating an Asian restaurant called “Hap-P-Kat” and that failed miserably so we’ll see. I’ll give this about a month and document and problems or successes I run into, as in OpenDNS flagging something that Untangle doesn’t, and post an update. Remember, there are A LOT more people rating OpenDNS’ content filter than Untangle’s (I think) so a mistake on their part does not mean that they are a lesser product.

Thanks to Dslreports.com for writing the source story about OpenDNS’ content filtering!

Update: I tested out the OpenDNS service against Untangle for just one website which is a given; http://www.playboy.com. Here are the returned messages, Untangle then OpenDNS.

This first image is from Untangle. It is the default content blocked message when a client attempts to access a website that the network administrator has deemed inappropriate.
Now, if Untangle was set to not block Adult or Pornographic websites, then OpenDNS was flag the website this their customizable content blocked message.

~ by johndball on February 21, 2008.