Free Safe Web Browsing: OpenDNS

We live in a world overflowing with abundant information and content. Answers to questions we used to ponder for days are now only a mouse click away. If used correctly, the benefits of this type of open access are obvious. However, anybody with a family that includes young children knows the dangers of such readily available content. Everything from hate speech and pornography to online predators and malware can infiltrate your computer system without your family even leaving the house. Large enterprises spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on appliances to safeguard their networks from objectionable content. However, thanks to the great folks at OpenDNS, you can take advantage of one of the foundational technologies of the internet to prevent unwanted material from reaching your computer.

The internet depends on a protocol called TCP/IP to move information from one point to another. TCP/IP requires that every node connected to the internet has a numbered address. Of course, numbers are more difficult to remember than names....would you rather keep track of 65.55.21.250 or www.microsoft.com? DNS servers exist on the internet to translate the name you type into your browser (www.microsoft.com) to an IP address (65.55.21.250) that is connected to the internet. OpenDNS supplies a set of DNS servers that anybody can use to translate names into addresses, but with the additional feature of filtering out undesired sites and displaying instead a message warning that the destination contains unsuitable content. For example, if you choose to filter out sites that are known to contain adware, instead of displaying a site with the "adware" tag, OpenDNS will return a web page notifying you that the site you are trying to access has been blocked due to being a known adware site.

OpenDNS is free, thanks to a community of volunteers that is continuously tagging and categorizing websites. It's also easy to revert to your previous DNS servers, so there's no risk to try it out.

To enable OpenDNS content filtering for your network, follow these steps:

1. Create a free OpenDNS account here

2. In order for OpenDNS to know who you are so that it can filter your requests correctly, you need to set up a "network" from the OpenDNS dashboard. Click on the "network" tab. If you are setting up OpenDNS from the network you want filtered, OpenDNS will detect your IP address and ask if it should use that IP for your network. If you are not on the network you'd like filtered, you can manually enter the IP address. If this is the case, OpenDNS will send you a confirmation e-mail with a link that you must access from within the network you want to have filtered. This is to prevent you from being able to block all of your neighbors websites :)

3. From the OpenDNS dashboard, click the "settings" and choose your filtering level. For simplicity, you can choose a level (high, moderate, low, etc.) which filters out predetermined categories, or for greater control, you can choose the specific categories you'd like to filter. You can also specifically block or allow individual websites.

4. Tell your computers to use the OpenDNS DNS servers. If you only have one computer, you can configure it to use the OpenDNS servers right in the operating system. If you have multiple computers accessing the internet through a router, I would advise configuring your router to use the OpenDNS servers instead. If you configure your router to use OpenDNS, it will tell all client devices (computers, gaming consoles, mobile phones) on your home network to use OpenDNS, also.

That's all you need to get going. There are some additional niceties that you may discover by exploring the OpenDNS dashboard. Statistics, for example, allows you to monitor DNS requests from your network.

One more thing I'd recommend: the IP update tool. As I described above, OpenDNS uses your IP address to identify how to filter your content. The only problem with using the IP address as an identifier is that your IP address will change over time. That's simply the nature of broadband internet. So, in order to automatically update OpenDNS when your IP address changes you can install the software in the link above. If you prefer not to install software on your PC, You can also manually update your IP address within OpenDNS, but this requires that you remember to do so after each power outage, router re-boot or circuit drop. What happens if you don't update OpenDNS when your IP changes? OpenDNS will not recognize your new IP and will not be able to filter the categories that you've specified.

I've been using OpenDNS for about a year and have found it to be a simple, unobtrusive tool that helps put my mind at ease when the kids are browsing the net. Is it perfect? Of course not - the most tech savvy will likely find ways around the filtering, and there's always the possiblity that a site gets mis-tagged, but my experiences with this free service have all been good.

Highly recommended.


Got an idea for a topic? E-mail me at toptoad@techonadime.net.