I have commented on this service before, but a podcast reminded me of what the service offers and I decided to promote the site again. OpenDNS is a filtering service that takes advantage of DNS. The domain name service you use converts a URL (a web address) to a the ip address that computers use to communicate (the series of four numbers separated by periods). You probably use a DNS provided by your service provider, but you can use other DNS servers. This is how OpenDNS works – you substitute it for the default.
When you use OpenDNS, the service can block (filter) your access to web sites. You might want to do this to avoid known phishing sites or to prevent children using your computer from viewing content you feel is objectionable. You have several ways of controlling what sites will be blocked. If you do nothing else, blocking phishing and some malware sites is worth the effort. This is a free service for home users.
One challenge in using this service is asking your system to use the DNS assigned by OpenDNS rather than the default. On a Mac, you open the network preference option from system preferences, select DNS and then enter the IP number provided by OpenDNS.
I have been using OpenDNS for many years and I have configured it to work on my network router so that the DNS address is passed through the DHCP requests to any device that connects to my home network. This not only protects those machines you configure, but any device that connects to your wireless…perfect when there are friends of my kids around with wifi enabled devices.
If you need to have devices not routed through OpenDNS, just hard code IP/DNS information into those specific computers. For this reason, I don’t use the generic internal IP range on the DHCP setup in my router.
I did realize that OpenDNS could be used to configure the router, but the process seemed more complicated than I wanted to take on. The issue of configuring the router as a way to protect wireless devices makes sense.