Block Adult and Phishing Websites for Free
Access to “Adult-content” sites has always been a problem for parents, internet cafe owners and even just very cautious net-individuals. How many times have we been redirected to a questionable site by mistake? It’s embarrassing and unprofessional (imagine an adult site popping up it’s ad during an online presentation?). Instead of investing money to buy censorware, why not try a service that not only block “BAD” websites, but also gives you more control and security for your network smarter and more reliable.
Too good to be true? Not really.
OpenDNS provides a safer, faster, smarter and more reliable way to navigate the Internet. It’s absolutely free, easy-to-setup and requires absolutely no download. Basically, OpenDNS lets you speed-up the website detection and loading process. Whether you realize it or not, you use the DNS every time you use the Internet for the web, email, and more. You want DNS to be blazing fast. OpenDNS is so fast because they run some of the largest DNS caches around and do it on their own high-performance network.
What it gives you: OpenDNS Features
- Faster sight browsing
- Anti-phishing filtter
- Adult sites blocking
- Track / Monitor network activity
- Typo correction (URLs)
- Works for Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile devices, gaming consoles, etc.
To get you started, here’s a complete guide on how to change your DNS server.
OpenDNS blocks Adult, Phishing websites and even domains that you can specify. The blocking service is powered by St. Bernard iGuard, one of the biggest names in internet filtering. To gain access to the iGuard’s security features, you need to sign up for a free account on OpenDNS.
Once you’ve signed up for a free OpenDNS account, log in and go to Networks tab.
Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see that OpenDNS has already read your IP and entered them into the necessary textboxes (I removed my IP for security purposes). What you need now is just a label for the IP address then click the ADD THIS NETWORK button.
Once you’ve added the network, go to Settings tab to configure filtering. You can block adult sites, phishing sites and custom domain name (I imagine this is a drawback if your administrator blocks Wikipedia all of the sudden).
Now if you find that OpenDNS has mistakenly blocked sites that you know isn’t a “BAD” site, add it to the Whitelist. While on that list, they will never be blocked on your network regardless of the content filtering categories you’ve turned on.
If you have dynamic IP address, you need to do an additional step:
1. Log in to your OpenDNS account.
2. You should be at SETTINGS tab. If not, click the SETTINGS tab and on the left hand bar, click “Set Up a Dynamic IP”
3. CHECK Enable dynamic IP update and click Apply button.
4. Register a free DNS-O-Matic account.
5. Login to DNS-O-Matic.
6. Click the drop down menu and select OpenDNS from the list. You should see the status “Waiting for first update“.
7. Download DNS-O-Matic Updater
8. Extract and run DNSoMaticupdate.exe
9. Enter your DNS-O-Matic username and password and click Refresh. DNS-O-Matic Updater will be minimized to your tray bar. Right click on the O icon and select “Enable Autostart”
DNS-O-Matic Updater boots up with Windows and checks your IP every 10 minutes. When the program detects a new IP address, it will pass the information to DNS-O-Matic to OpenDNS. Don’t fret if you will see balloon notification saying “Update process was successful, and your network preferences are applied.” That’s just DNS-O-Matic doing it’s work.
Sorry, no pics for DNS-O-Matic, both my net lines are on static IPs.
Note that this amazing service is offered by OpenDNS.
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