If you are worried about your children accessing inappropriate content on the Internet, you need to install a parental control filter or software. Most of the leading internet parental controls software out there are subscription based, meaning that you need to renew your software license annually just like antivirus software. The alternative is to use the free services of www.opendns.com. OpenDNS is a replacement for your ISP’s own DNS servers. When you use the OpenDNS service, every webpage address you key into your browser is first checked by OpenDNS own database of phishing, adult or other blocked sites. Only when it passes these checks, will the webpage be allowed to display. OpenDNS operates and uses PhishTank as the of source of phishing data. PhishTank is so good that Yahoo! Mail uses its data to protect all account holders. Adult site data is provided by St. Bernard’s iGuard which is a human-reviewed URL database from St. Bernard Software.

Installing OpenDNS is easy. Just key in preferred and alternate DNS server addresses (shown below) into your broadband router or PC and you’re away. When you key these addresses into your broadband router, you are protecting the whole home or business network. When you use these DNS addresses on your PC, you are only protecting that PC. OpenDNS has installation guides for most popular brands of routers as well as operating systems, including Windows XP, Mac OS X, Linux even PocketPC and Nintendo Wii.

Preferred DNS server address : 208.67.222.222

Alternate DNS server address : 208.67.220.220

opendns.jpgImportant Note: Phishing protection is enabled by default but Adult site protection has to be turned on. This means that the moment you start using the above OpenDNS server addresses, you are protected from phishing sites. But to enable adult site protection, you need to register a free account with OpenDNS first. This enables you to specify which of the 7 categories of adult sites you want to block. Registering an account is also useful because you can also block individual domains as well as monitor which websites are being visited.

Once you register an account with OpenDNS, you then need to configure which networks you want OpenDNS to protect. By default, OpenDNS auto detects the external IP address assigned to you by your Internet Service Provider. But as most ISPs provide dynamic IPs, the next time you connect to the Internet, your IP may have changed. OpenDNS overcomes this by supporting Dynamic IP addresses. You will need to install a dynamic dns client IP update software to periodically update OpenDNS with your new IP address automatically. Click here for a list of supported client IP software.

If all this seems a little too technical, well, I guess that’s the price of using free services. But remember, it’s only a one time effort. Enjoy …

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Filed under: Internet Safety

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