OpenDNS should Offer a Homepage Redirect to get your IP
My 11 years old sister just started using the computer and the Internet independently. This achievement is a great for a computer-nerd like me. While I am proud of her, I am also worried about all the perverts who may bother her on Messenger or Skype, or the porn/questionable-content that she may innocently find online.
For the IMs, I restricted the possibility of anybody to message/add her, if he/she is not already in her “friend” list. In this way she can communicate only with her friends (we added them together) and the rest of my family (which I added).
For the browser, I relied on OpenDNS. Their FamilyShield product is free, very easy to setup (just force the DNS in your wireless router) and offers a decent protection against spam/adware/porn sites.
OpenDNS offers another Free product called OpenDNS Basic, which offers more customization on the sites to block/unblock and produces a few reports on what the user does on the Internet. I would like to switch to that solution, unfortunately it requires a software to be installed on the PCs to keep your IP address updated in their servers (so they know which profile to apply).
I think there is a much better/easier solution to this problem: they could just provide a form where you can specify your browser homepage (e.g., www.google.com) and provide you a link (e.g., opendns.com/homepage/<secret_user_key>) to use in your browser’s homepage settings that will (a) tell them what your IP is and (b) quickly redirect you to the homepage you selected.
Since nobody will/can block opendns.com, the link is guaranteed to work no matter who is the user. In addition, this allows companies to deploy the setting/homepage on multiple machines and update all of them from a single console.
Seems simple and effective. I wonder why they do not do it. I will email them.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Hi Alessio,
Thanks for the post on OpenDNS and for helping to get the word out about FamilyShield.
While the OpenDNS updated is super lightweight — all it does is update us with your IP address — your idea is an interesting one.
If you haven’t already, you should add it to the IdeaBank. We frequently take the most suggested/voted on ideas from our community and add them to the product. http://ideabank.opendns.com/
Please be in touch if you have any other questions or ideas!
Best,
Laura
OpenDNS