A faster, safer Web

Use OpenDNS

I started playing around with OpenDNS today, and it looks very useful. OpenDNS is a free service that uses DNS to block dangerous, adult, or unwanted Web sites. Personally, I feel pretty safe browsing the Web, and don’t really worry about malicious content or phishing sites. What really irks me are those fake sites that come up when you mistype a domain name. OpenDNS watches for those typos and redirects you to your intended site, which is fantastic for those of us who’s keyboards are defective (or who just can’t type).

Besides being a handy tool for protecting your network and redirecting you to correct sites, the OpenDNS service allows you to log and monitor what sites are being requested and visited, which is handy if you’re the system admin for a company and need to monitor such things. You can also create site shortcuts – for instance you could create a shortcut gg for google.com. But, possibly the biggest benefit to using OpenDNS is their large DNS cache, which helps Web sites load more quickly.

All of these tools and benefits are handy for an office environment, where, for productivity reasons, you may need to monitor, and sometimes block, Web traffic; or, for the home environment, where you may need to protect children from viewing adult or other unwanted Web content.