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OpenDNS Makes $20k/day Filtering Phishing And Porn Sites (techcrunch.com)
44 points by nickb on July 21, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments


I started using these guys about a year ago and haven't looked back. Highly recommended for the shortcuts feature alone, let alone the added security they provide.


Might be a good service, but the name is highly inappropriate. Censorship is the opposite of being open. Perhaps "CensorDNS" would have been more accurate.


You've got a point about the name, but the filtering is opt-in and when a site is blocked by a filter you get a message explaining why. You can use it as plain old free DNS if you're looking to avoid the ad-filled failed lookup redirects that ISPs have been pushing lately. All the extras are completely optional.


Blocking criminal phishing sites isn't censorship.


Another advantage of OpenDNS is security. It's rather coincidental this got posted on same day a massive DNS vulnerability was leaked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=252865

I would hope that all the major ISPs have patched their DNS servers by now, but if your not sure it might be a good idea to switch to OpenDNS, at least temporarily.


how do they stay up to date on what they block and what they allow?


From the article:

OpenDNS also uses their community to drive new features and tag new malware sites. Users submit ideas and vote on them in a Digg-like interface. And when a user blacklists a site and tags it with a category, other users are asked to verify. If they do, the site is added to the general category blacklist as well.

Sounds exploitable...


There have been problems with that kind of approach before, for example for companies that ended up on spam blacklists without justification.

I don't like it :-(




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