The famous quote about defining pornography is “I know it when I see it,” from a 1964 Supreme Court case. I’m glad we’re working with St. Bernard Software to get human-reviewed categorization of adult sites for our adult site blocking service.
At home, I’m the network administrator. While testing adult site blocking, I learned that you need to be careful what you block. My wife alerted (ahem) me to my overzealous blocking. For the interested, TMZ.com is classified as both lingerie/bikini and adult themes. 
I cannot disagree… but it’s still a fun celebrity gossip site. It’s no longer blocked on my network, though other categories are.
That kind of control is useful, and it’s why we offer 6 categories, so you can make the right choices for your network.
Avoid making my domestic misstep. Check a site to find out whether it would be blocked, and why.
Freddy
A Whitelist feature would be cool
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Joe Siegler
Agreed - an override for that would be helpful - was surprised that one of my regular sites was classified as “adult themes”, when it isn’t an adult or porn site or anything like that.
Whitelist, please.
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Johannes
Full ACK!
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Phil
I second what Freddy says.
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Adam
whitelist would be great.
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Marv Conn
Whitelisting is the cure for over zealous categories. One of the problems I’ve faced in the past is that many blacklisting services blacklist things that don’t appear to be a problem. For example, many people say they can’t reach a popular hosting company’s website from work as it is blocked. A little control is all we really need.
Thank you.
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
John Roberts
We’re listening. No promises on timeline or priority yet, but hearing specifics and interest is valuable.
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
JT
Yeah a whitelist would be a welcomed feature.
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
David Szpunar
I’ll chime in that a whitelist is definitely needed. To be useful in a corporate environment at least, a solution needs to be able to be overridden when someone higher-up says “why is that site blocked, and unblock it now okay?” If turning off the filtering (on one or more categories at least) is required to do this it’s not going to be fun. But it’s a very good first start, congrats! I’ve raved enough in my blog, I’ll stop now here
posted on June 12th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Devin
I 2nd the white list option!
posted on June 14th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Joachim
How about some instrcutions what cllient to use on my Mac with 10.4?
posted on June 14th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Richard Brookside
I 2nd/3rd/4th/5th/6h and 7th the Whitelist request.
Additionally, some sort feature that lets us dynamicall add/delete domains to be blocked/allowed for our specific network. For example, if I don’t want my kids to get to YOUTUBE or MYSPACE over for the weekend, I should be able to add that/those domain(s) so they are blocked.
Lastly, a way we could block the google-cache would be useful. I have used that many times at work to get around their restrictive firewall rules.
Thanks
posted on June 16th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Adam
Any chance of a bookmarklet, like the OpenDNS Cache Check?
posted on June 17th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Will
Wow
I just found Open DNS Beats Telus dns hands down. I think a white list would be great but it may be too difficult to implement for free.
192,290,208,735 dns requests all filtered through individual whitelists. CRAP!!
It will be interesting to see if it can be pulled off!! It would definitely be the icing on what is already a great piece of cake.
Thanks Guys for the service your providing
posted on June 19th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Dick Hazeleger
I agree with Will: It would be the icing on a beautful (and delicious) cake to have such a feature (Whitelist), however the implementation of such a feature could be very, very problematic if it were to be individual whitelists.
I want to take the opportunity to thank the OpenDNS team for showing that the internet can be fast.. if you have the courage to drop your ISP’s DNS-servers; I did for an eMail program’s “Direct Delivery” feature (which needs two DNS-servers) and was so impressed by the speed the process then had, that I have set my TCP/IP’s DNS setting to OpenDNS as well, a step I so far haven’t regretted.
posted on June 21st, 2007 at 2:42 am
Abraxias
+ whitelist
and, I’d like to suggest adding:
• “ATF” (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives)
• “Gambling”
• “Adult Shopping”
as categories to the Adult Site Blocking
posted on June 21st, 2007 at 6:48 am
Movie: Knocked Up | clock — watching time, the only true currency
[…] Amusing side note: the official studio site was blocked by OpenDNS’s adult site blocking feature. Having seen the R-movie, I guess I’m not surprised, but it never occurred to me until I got the block page. Here at home, I just unblocked the “nudity” category, though, to view the site. You can check a site’s category for yourself with this domain checking tool. This new OpenDNS benefit we rolled out two weeks ago with St. Bernard has been very popular and very educational. […]
posted on June 21st, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Lee Munsil
I’ve left a message on the OpenDNS forums (adult content) asking how do we communicate a porn site (really bad) that is not being blocked by iGuard/iPrism (whatever)? Explicit movies/pictures exist on the home page.
I have also sent emails to iPrism support to ask the same question.
I blocked out the name on my forums post. But you can check it out. I have also used your cache-checking link to confirm that “they” think the site is not an “adult content” site. They should look again.
posted on June 21st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Abraxias
I’d also like to suggest adding “Dating Services” as a category to the Adult Site Blocking.
posted on June 22nd, 2007 at 9:26 am
Abraxias
here’s another Adult Site Blocking category suggestion that’s related to ATF, “drugs” (both legal & illegal: controlled substances, pharmaceuticals & narcotics)
posted on June 23rd, 2007 at 10:29 pm
K Carey
Fantastic Service!!!! As we have 3 small boys (ages 3, 5 & 7) I was trying to figure out a way to eliminate porn, etc from their accidental internet viewing experience / wanderings. I am very happy!
However, if my wife wants to buy something from Victoria’s Secret it requires me going into the OpenDNS setup to temporarily allow viewing of that site. It would be nice if there was a way for her to enter a password (made in account setup) on the OpenDNS blocked page that would allow her access to the site to buy what she wanted. Is there any thought on adding this feature in the future?
Thanks again!
posted on June 24th, 2007 at 10:03 am
brian
I just want fast DNS service. And I’m no longer getting that. I think you guys are becoming another one of those services that lose site of their original mission. And wasn’t that fast and reliable DNS service?
posted on June 24th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Ilgaz
Adult blocking is a nice step since most of those sites are also famous for using some real evil browser exploits whenever they are able to.
OpenDNS needs sort of “Black hat” list from somewhere, a credible source and should enable that too.
You would say “well let them don’t visit crack sites”, the “crack sites” also sometimes crack search engines to display their results instead of legitimate software.
E.g. a scenario would be, non technical Graphics Artist looking for Adobe Photoshop CS3 help and hits crack site instead.
Forget everything, there is famous and evil “iFrame” stories. You can search a credible site like Securityfocus.com or SANS for “iframe” and “exploit” and be amazed,no less.
posted on June 24th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
NovaSam
Custom Set (overrides other sets, and would replace blocked domains)
List domains you would like to allow or block
This way you can have your white list and black list in the same section.
Also I agree with K Carey,
It would be nice to be able to put in a password to override the filtering when needed, Any Ideas?
posted on June 25th, 2007 at 9:18 am
ChamPro
Hmmmm, nasa.gov is blocked, but it doesn’t show up in the search.
posted on September 13th, 2007 at 4:39 am
John Roberts
@ChamPro — check your blocked domains list and read this
http://www.opendns.com/support/article/181
posted on September 13th, 2007 at 6:11 am
usama
very thanks for members open dns
posted on March 17th, 2009 at 6:31 pm