Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Filtering Your Internet Connection with Open DNS
As we mentioned in our recent newsletter there is now a really quick and simple way to filter your Internet connection to:
- Stop kids from seeing content they shouldn't.
- Keep people away from sites they shouldn't be accessing.
- Protect you from phishing sites and other Internet nasties.
That method is "OpenDNS.com".
Setting up OpenDNS is really easy, and will take only a few minutes. To do it for your home network or computer read on.
First - do you have just one computer or a number of computers using your Internet connection at home?
If you have just one computer then you can follow the instructions for setting up your computer. If you have a number of computers you are probably best of configuring your router so that the setting will apply to all of your computers without having to change each computer individually.
Once you have done that you are now being protected by OpenDNS at a minimal level (which just protects against phishing). However, to get the best out of OpenDNS you should now go and create an account.
After you have created an account you can adjust what sort of websites you would like to be filtered. By default you will find the category level is set to minimal which just stops known phising attacks.
There are some really easy options to choose here. For example "Low" will also filter out pornography, while moderate will filter out other adult related content. So for home, you might set this to low or moderate. You can also "customise" and choose exactly which categories you want people to be able to see, and which ones you don't.
Go and take a look - this is a really neat tool and compared to what you used to have to do to solve these sorts of problems is very simple.
If you would like to try setting it up for the office network just let us know. We can also give you a hand at home if you need some assistance.

