How To Protect Yourself and Your Kids Online Using OpenDNS
Posted on October 12, 2009 by Mida
The internet is not safe place its full with all kind of garbage content porn, alcohol, adult content, nudity, and more.. when it comes to protecting your kids online there are many solutions out there some software help you block access to certain types of websites I’ve tried some of them but really not all these software are 100% safe.
Its not just matter of protecting our kids i think we need to protect ourselves on the internet more than our kids, there are many phishing sites that tries to steal your email, bank account, credit cards, and for many people especially non IT its so easy for them to get fooled by these phishing sites
I’m going to talk about web service that will help you protect yourself and your kids online, Open DNS its Free DNS service (Domain Name System) that you use instead of your ISP’s DNS but it offer more than just DNS service, OpenDNS allow you to filter all kind of websites online that may harm you and your kids, And its completely Free so you don;t have to worry about anything.
To get started first you need to go to Open DNS and create free account then download the OpenDNS Updater application (I’ll explain why this is important), Now go to your account dashboard and under the setting tab and you should see your current IP address then you need to click on “add this network” button
Now OpenDNS should add new network and you will get this nice windows to name your network I’ve choosed Home you can use whatever you want there is one thing important in this step is to make sure that the second option “is this dynamic IP address?” is checked in most cases you should have dynamic IP address not static, but if you not sure make sure you ask your ISP support first.
Now click done OpenDNS will add your new network to the dashboard and you should see it right away.
So lets talk about how you can configure this network and enable filtering content, on the dashboard under setting tab select your network, Now you will get the filtering content setting and as you can see there are 4 levels of filtering content plus Non, and custom filtering and beside every level there are explanation on which websites category OpenDNS is going to block
If you not sure which level to choose from i recommend you choose Moderate level this will block and adult related sites, and phishing sites.But if you are looking for something special you can select the Custom level then you will be able to block certain types of websites based on your preferences
Now if you take look at the second section of the page you can exclude certain websites from the categories above, For example if you have choose to block Social Networking but you want to allow access only to Facebook.com type in the site name then from the dropdown menu select “Never Block”
Every time you or your kids try to access site belong to category you have blocked you will get this message in your browser.
Dynamic IP address problems, as i said you need to download OpenDNS Updater application this is small application that run on your computer to do one thing every time your Dynamic IP address change will update it on your Network dashboard, If you have static IP address you don’t need this application because your IP address never changes.
Related posts:
- List Of Public DNS Servers
- How to Setup Google Public DNS on your Computer
- How To Block Unwanted Sites Without Installing Any Software
- Privacy Policy
- OpenDNS Browse Web Faster And Safer
Filed Under: Tutorials & How To