Did you see anything interesting online last month? Between blog posts, gaming sites, Facebook updates and breaking news, there was a lot to take in. One thing you probably didn’t see — if you are on an OpenDNS-protected network — were Phishing attempts.

Since we block these scammy and fraudulent Web sites, you might not realize how prevalent they are across the Internet. In July alone, we blocked almost one million phishing attempts. That’s how many times people on OpenDNS-protected networks saw the “phishing attempt blocked” page.

Even with the work we do to make sure you’re protected from seeing phishing sites, we can’t always catch everything. If you ever see a Web site or receive an email and aren’t sure if it’s legitimate, we’ve got you covered:

Five Easy Ways to Spot A Phishing Attempt

• Poor resolution: Phishing websites are often poor in quality, since they are created with urgency and have a short lifespan. If the resolution on a logo or in text strikes you as poor, be suspicious.
• Forged URL: Even if a link has a name you recognize somewhere in it, it doesn’t mean it links to the real organization. Read URLs from right to left — the real domain is at the end of the URL. Also, websites where it is safe to enter personal information begin with “https” — the “s” stands for secure. If you don’t see “https” do not proceed. Look out for URLs that begin with an IP address, such as: http://12.34.56.78/firstgenericbank/account-update/ — these are likely phishes.
• Generic greeting: Phishing emails are usually sent in large batches. To save time, Internet criminals use generic names like “First Bank Customer” so they don’t have to type all recipients’ names out and send emails one-by-one.
• Requests personal information: The point of sending phishing email is to trick you into providing your personal information. If you receive an email requesting your personal information, it is probably a phishing attempt.
• Sense of urgency: Internet criminals want you to provide your personal information now. They do this by making you think something has happened that requires you to act fast. The faster they get your information, the faster they can move on to another victim.

As always, we’re going to continue working on finding ways to improve the Internet and make it safer and smarter for our customers. For now, happy [and safe] surfing — and if you have a friend who could use protection from online phishing attempts, let them know about OpenDNS.

Kids get into all sorts of things they shouldn’t get into online. And we know parents want to protect their kids from what’s out there. They want to know that what they’ve set up is effective, up-to-date and always working.

Today we’re introducing a new service called FamilyShield and it’s the absolute simplest and most straightforward way for parents to protect kids from the bad stuff online. There is no complicated set up and no software to install on your computers.

FamilyShield is different from — and better than — the majority of parental controls software choices parents are faced with. For starters, ours is free to use. And when set up on your wireless router, FamilyShield does more than block adult content on computers; it blocks it on Wi-Fi devices like the iPod Touch or the Nintendo DS and on video game consoles like Xbox and Wii. In addition to blocking adult content, FamilyShield also blocks proxies and anonymizers, which are how enterprising/tech-savvy kids often get around parental blocks.

In addition, because FamilyShield leverages the OpenDNS content filtering system, the list of sites being blocked is constantly updated, 24/7. These updates happen automatically, without requiring any changes on the user’s end.

Last but not least, because it runs on the global OpenDNS network, it will make your household Internet faster and overall more reliable. With the OpenDNS perfect 100 percent uptime record, you won’t have to tolerate annoying, intermittent Internet outages anymore. This, of course, is in stark contrast to parental controls software that is often known for slowing down your Internet experience.

Why did we launch FamilyShield? For about as long as OpenDNS has been around, we’ve heard demand from you, our users, to provide a pre-configured version of the service that automatically blocks adult content. The idea has been submitted to IdeaBank, the part of our community where anyone can suggest new OpenDNS features and functionality, a few different times. (For example, here and here.) We aim to give you what you want and FamilyShield is just that.

How does FamilyShield work? Much like how OpenDNS Basic works, you just follow our simple two-step instructions to configure our special FamilyShield IPs on your router. Unlike OpenDNS Basic, there’s no account to configure, no complicated settings to customize, and no downloads or software to install. Even if you have a dynamic IP address.

FamilyShield’s IPs are:

208.67.222.123
208.67.220.123

What does FamilyShield Block? The service blocks pornographic content, including our “Pornography,” “Tasteless,” and “Sexuality” categories, in addition to proxies and anonymizers (which can render filtering useless). It also blocks phishing and some malware.

If you’re using OpenDNS Basic today without any filtering and think FamilyShield looks just simple and straightforward enough for you, just follow the simple instructions to point to the new IPs. But, if you use OpenDNS, love OpenDNS and know of a family who could use a parental controls service that also makes their home network faster, let them know about FamilyShield.

It’s a new year, a fresh start, and the perfect time to take a look at all of the functionality your OpenDNS account offers.

Many of you use OpenDNS primarily for faster, more reliable DNS resolution. DNS is the foundation, the core of our service and we take great pride in the fact that OpenDNS is the safest, fastest, smartest and most reliable recursive DNS service in the world — and also the choice of more than 15 million users. But today I encourage you to take a look at the other features in your OpenDNS account that you might not be using yet.

• First off, check out our Web Content Filtering. We provide award-winning filtering with more than 50 content categories, manageable entirely through your Dashboard. It can be as simple as choosing the level of filtering you want (high, moderate, low or minimal) or as powerful as selecting individual sites you want blocked.
• Next, enable Stats and Logs. OpenDNS is the only way to see at a domain level what’s actually happening on your network. We show you things like the most popular sites visited from your network, and also alert you when we see Internet-scale malware. OpenDNS Stats let you spot trends before they become problems, and you can manually purge your data at any time.
• Also, Customize with an image and messages on the Guide and block pages. We let you swap out the OpenDNS logo on the Guide with your own logo or photo, and let you customize the text there and on the page your users see when they try to get to a site that’s been blocked.
• Last, peruse our Advanced Settings. Here you’ll find features like SmartCache, which makes Web sites that are down for the rest of the Internet load for you, and Basic Malware/Botnet protection, which will keep your network safe from certain types of malware and viruses, like Conficker.

These are all features provided in our Basic, free version, and OpenDNS Deluxe and Enterprise offer lots more. From more robust Web content filtering and enterprise-class Malware protection, to reporting and more comprehensive Stats, to an Audit Log and Delegated Administration, and the ability to turn off advertisements on the Guide, OpenDNS subscription services are worth a look. Particularly if you manage the network for a school, small business or enterprise and are currently using a filtering appliance, I also encourage you to talk to our sales team about how much money we can save you, and how much more ease and functionality, we can provide you.

Happy New Year everyone!

This is my first blog post here at OpenDNS, though some of you may know me from answering your support emails. It is not unusual, however, for our own users to sit in the tech support seat themselves and offer help to others. Yesterday we received the following email, and I thought it was so good we should share it:

I’ve been studying abroad in the UK for three weeks and dealing with a crummy internet connection, but at least I had OpenDNS configured on my machine. This morning, the internet stopped working for everyone in the hotel… except me. It took me a bit to realize what had happened. Once I realized the Hotel’s ISP’s DNS was down, I spent the entire afternoon configuring OpenDNS on the laptops of everyone in the hotel lobby……we have to thank you for re-connecting us to the world, even across the pond!

Thanks for such an incredible service that anyone who understands networking would pay precious money for, yet you somehow provide it for free. It’s great to be immune to one of the most annoying internet problems you can have.

- Dominic

Thanks Dominic! While we are always happy to help, it is also nice when our users take the initiative to spread the word of OpenDNS and contribute positively to their community. After all, that is one of the ideas OpenDNS was founded upon.

OpenDNS is for everyone. And by everyone, I mean everyone; moms, dads, kids, nerds, jocks, etc. We recently found out that our use of a CAPTCHA meant we were excluding blind and visually impaired people from using portions of our service. Thanks to some quick coding by Cory, we had an audio version of the CAPTCHA launched to solve the problem.

I was surprised at how easy it was to implement and I’d encourage anyone who uses a CAPTCHA to consider offering an audio alternative. There is a huge population of Internet-savvy blind and visual impaired users on the Internet who are well worth your time and effort to accommodate. If you want help with doing this on your site, we’d be happy to show you how we did it.

Both!

Today we announced that OpenDNS now has 3 million users. That’s a lot of people. It’s also roughly the number of people living in Los Angeles, CA according to the 2000 Census.

If you’re reading this you’re probably one of those 3 million OpenDNS users. You did a great thing for your network by enabling OpenDNS, the biggest AND fastest-growing DNS service in the world.

2008 is poised to be a big year. We’re working hard to bring all sorts of new features to your OpenDNS account – tools we know you’re gonna wonder how you ever lived without. (Hint: Look for Web content filtering to get better and better.) As always, if you have an idea for a way we can make the service better for you, don’t hesitate to pass it along. Chances are some of the other 2,999,999 OpenDNS users want the same thing.

Happy New Year everyone.

Wow! It’s only the 11th of the month and already 83 new schools have switched to OpenDNS!

In case you missed the initial announcement, October is Take OpenDNS to School month. That means we’re asking you to spread the word about OpenDNS to your kids’ school(s), your friends’ kids’ school(s) and any other school you’re affiliated with. Of course, I’m the first to say it’s not that hard of a sell… OpenDNS and schools are perfect together. Schools have restrictive budgets. OpenDNS is free. Schools have kids. OpenDNS has Web content filtering. See what I mean?

There are still 20 days left in the month, which is plenty of time to print this PDF and make sure it gets to everyone that can benefit.

OpenDNS customers are the best.

Yeah, we make your life easier with our 100% reliability and we save you time with super speedy browsing. We even keep you and yours safe with optional phishing protection. But often times it’s hard to quantify the amount of money we save you.

Not anymore, say our customers.

Since launching adult site blocking earlier this month, we’ve heard our free service is saving thousands of dollars for companies and organizations who would otherwise pay for a similar service that does the exact same thing – often not even as well as we do it.

This is great for companies, but even greater for schools and libraries with very limited technology budget, combined with regulations requiring filters to keep kids safe online. Like Jackson School District and Berkeley Public Libraries.

We’re glad we can provide you such an awesome service without exhausting your budget.