homecomputerlab

A common question parents will ask you when they find out you work in IT is: “How do I block certain websites (mainly porn) from being accessed at home?” There are a number of ways this can be achieved, however for the typical home user who doesn’t want to run a dedicated proxy server or  pay for software/a service to do this for you, the solution I like to recommend is based on DNS filtering using OpenDNS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS

OpenDNS web filtering will stop any machine in the house connected to your home network from being able to access porn sites as opposed to just a single machine with parental control software installed. You can select other categories you would like blocked and can also specify individual domains ie: facebook.com, but again this will block the website from being accessed on all machines connected to your home network.

OpenDNS also offer other services as a bonus such as malware protection and anti-phising as well as detailed stats and reporting to keep you informed and updated about your network’s top internet searches allowing you to spot trends and keep an eye on your teenagers web usage.

To use OpenDNS as a content filter, simply sign up for a free account. If you do not have a static public IP address you will also need to configure your router/pc to automatically update with a DDNS client such as DynDNS which can then be configured to update your OpenDNS account by using DNS-O-Matic.