topic Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services? in OpenDNS

Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

tonmachielsen — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 16:42:22 GMT

For my network i have certain add services in my individual blocked domain list, but i cannot see them being blocked by openDNS. To be use i am using the right domains i added them to my hosts file and pointed them to 127.0.0.1. Then they get blocked.

I know that OpenDNS had an add blocking category once and that this category has been taken away. Does that mean that OpenDNS is deliberately allowing ad services to pass through the users blacklist?

I am talking about the following domains:

#Ad Blocking to help/test OpenDNS

ad.360yield.com
ads.flurry.com
ads.yahoo.com
betrad.com
doubleclick.net
googleadservices.com
pagead2.googlesyndication.com
tapjoy.com
tapjoyads.com
www.googletagmanager.com
www.smartadserver.com

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

rotblitz — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 18:45:44 GMT

"I know that OpenDNS had an add blocking category once and that this category has been taken away."

No, and no. This category exists. You can submit domains into it, but you cannot select the Advertisement category for blocking yet. This is how it always was.

"Does that mean that OpenDNS is deliberately allowing ad services to pass through the users blacklist?"

No, in no way. I have also some of the listed domains in my "always block" list, and they are always blocked without problems. see attached.

"i cannot see them being blocked by openDNS. To be use i am using the right domains i added them to my hosts file and pointed them to 127.0.0.1. Then they get blocked."

These symptoms indicate a totally different problem than you think. You most likely have a broken configuration.
Post the complete plain text output of the following diagnostic commands, so that I may see what's wrong:

nslookup -type=txt debug.opendns.com.

nslookup ads.yahoo.com.

nslookup doubleclick.com.

Btw, you don't need to block googleadservices.com and pagead2.googlesyndication.com if you have doubleclick.net blocked, because these are automatically included then, see below. This safes some "always block" entries.

nslookup www.googleadservices.com.
Server: dns1.local.prv
Address: 10.165.161.12

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: pagead.l.doubleclick.net
Addresses: 74.125.230.153
74.125.230.154
74.125.230.141
Aliases: www.googleadservices.com

nslookup pagead2.googlesyndication.com.
Server: dns1.local.prv
Address: 10.165.161.12

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: pagead46.l.doubleclick.net
Addresses: 2a00:1450:4009:80b::1019
74.125.230.153
74.125.230.141
74.125.230.154
Aliases: pagead2.googlesyndication.com

BlockedDomains.jpg

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

tonmachielsen — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:46:21 GMT

This is what i see:

>nslookup -type=txt debug.opendns.com
Server: resolver1.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.222.222

DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to resolver1.opendns.com timed-out

>nslookup ads.yahoo.com
Server: resolver1.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.222.222

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: ads.yahoo.com
Addresses: 67.215.65.131
67.215.65.131

>nslookup doubleclick.com
Server: resolver1.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.222.222

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    doubleclick.com
Addresses: 2a00:1450:4003:807::1008
          173.194.45.174
          173.194.45.160
          173.194.45.169
          173.194.45.163
          173.194.45.167
          173.194.45.166
          173.194.45.162
          173.194.45.165
          173.194.45.168
          173.194.45.161
          173.194.45.164
What am i supposed to see? It looks like these domains resolve correctly to their original hosts.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

rotblitz — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 16:30:25 GMT

Well, ads.yahoo.com is well blocked by your settings, because 67.215.65.131 is hit-block.opendns.com (i.e. listed in "always block").

Not so doubleclick.com. Sorry, this was a typo from me. It should have been:

nslookup doubleclick.net.

Also, repeat the first diagnostic command where you got a timeout (and don't forget the trailing dot again with these commands!):

nslookup -timeout=12 -type=txt debug.opendns.com.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

tonmachielsen — Wed, 26 Nov 2014 18:32:18 GMT

All good.

When will we have ad-blocking as a category?

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

rotblitz — Wed, 26 Nov 2014 20:25:51 GMT

If you ask me, I can't know. I only could help with your previous questions, not with this one. This can be answered by OpenDNS only.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

alexahar — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 00:04:02 GMT

At the moment, OpenDNS is not designed to be an ad blocking service and therefore we categorize domains for advertising; however, they are not able to be blocked at this time and there are currently no announced plans to enable any ad blocking capabilities. You are always free to add advertising domains to your block list to create your own ad blocking list to block.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

tonmachielsen — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 07:45:00 GMT

Ok, thanks!

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

thekochs — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 02:07:49 GMT

I'm new to OpenDNS......what are the top AD sites to put in the Always Block Domain feature ?
I looked at my "stats" and see ads.flurry.com that is in your original list.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

mattwilson9090 — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 02:50:05 GMT

I have never seen those types of statistics. What's more important is not what everyone else has added in their list, but how you want to use OpenDNS.

Many businesses want to block social networking sites, while home users let them through. Some families want to block all search engine and then whitelist a specific one, while businesses usually don't care. The best thing to do is to block the categories that you don't want accessed, and then add any that appear to be problems after categories are blocked, or that you specifically don't want to have in your network.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

thekochs — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:03:24 GMT

Anyone want to chime in for top AD sites I should apply the domain to my "Always Block" list ?
I know it is just opinion but I'm asking.
Please list the exact URL I'd need to add.

Thx !

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

mattwilson9090 — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:39:44 GMT

Again, without knowing what you want to accomplish with OpenDNS it's impossible to make specific recommendations, especially to the blacklist. The blacklist isn't intended as the primary management for what you block, it's intended for the outliers that either aren't covered in a blocked category, or something specific that you need blocked that is in a category you want to allow. That's the whole purpose of the categories, so that you don't have to manually add everything to a whitelist or blacklist.

I personally use very few blacklist entries, generally ones that aren't yet categorized for a category that I need to block. I actually use more whitelist entries, to allow a specific domain that is categorized in a domain that I otherwise do want to block.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

tonmachielsen — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 07:38:21 GMT

I see OpenDNS as a platform to centrally manage what my family will see when they browse the internet and to protect the devices in my home against malware. In my household we are my wife, myself and two growing up kids 8 and 13 years old. I use categories to prevent that my kids are unintentionally exposed to inappropriate content while browsing the web.

The internet has changed from a source of information to a mechanism to force specific content to users. Mechanisms used are, among others, geotargeting (unintentional language changes, manipulation of search results), cookies (content bubble, look it up on Google), and ads.

OpenDNS cannot do anything about geotargeting, as far as i know, or about the search/content bubble caused by websites registering who is doing what on the internet.. But ads, yes. I am not against ALL ads. Ads are needed to pay for hosting. I am against ANNOYING ads. Ads that break the web experience. We can use OpenDNS to prevent exposure to those unwanted ads. OpenDNS is a perfect platform to centrally manage which ads can be seen and which not. So among other categories and security functions i use OpenDNS as a platform to control which ads can be seen by my family.

I think that this discussion would not be needed if Open DNS would enable us to block Ads as a category.

Ah, and a ads domains blacklist can be found by simply searching in Google. There are several lists available.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

tonmachielsen — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 07:43:34 GMT

Having said all this i started searching the web and found this: http://www.fooldns.com/fooldns-community/english-version/

I'm going to try it out.

Any competitive info comparing FoolDNS and OpenDNS?

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

mattwilson9090 — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 08:25:04 GMT

OpenDNS at it's core is a recursive DNS service with a lot of additional features added on, including security related features, domain blocking, and DNS reliability. If blocking something requires a feature beyond DNS service OpenDNS can't even see it, let alone block it.

The issue of blocking the ads category has been debated in many threads on this forum, the end result of which Alexander's statement above regarding blocking ads. I'm not going to try to rehash any of that conversation here but you are free to read the threads that discuss it. In short, if you want to use OpenDNS and block ads you'll need to use adblocker software, such as Ad Block Plus.

That said, I've never heard of FoolDNS, but a few things jumped out at me. The vast majority of the website is not in English so I can't read what's there, so I can't really evaluate it. I suspect it's in Italian, but since that's not one of the several languages I have studied, I can't say for sure. If you read that language you are free to evaluate it, but if you can't read the language I'd run at full speed from this service. Unlike OpenDNS it does not block categories and does not seem to be user configurable. They are only concerned with blocking ads, cookies, and malware, but I have no idea how effective they are at either task. In short, the only material you can block are ads that they find objectionable. Although it's listed as a free service for home users, you can do only so many DNS lookups (with no enumeration of how many, in what period of time, or how many users at a particular network the service is intended to support). I get the impression that there might be a strong upsell campaign for anyone using the free service. Also, they SELL your data.

They claim that the data is anonymized, but any company claiming to be a security service that is also selling your data is suspect. They claim not to track IP addresses, but as we've learned from the NSA's snooping, much information can be gleaned from metadata and whatever other information they might be tracking. I've seriously got to wonder who they are selling the data to, and if they are selling it to advertisers, does that mean an abusive advertiser can get "greenlit" by them simply by offering some money or buying data from them.

In short, this isn't a service that I'd feel comfortable using or even testing, let alone recommending to others.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

rotblitz — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 15:30:03 GMT

I came to similar conclusions like mattwilson9090.

The service is not configurable and does not provide any stats in the free version.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

rotblitz — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 15:39:33 GMT

@thekochs
"what are the top AD sites"

This is not the question. The question would be: what are your top ad domains, because these are different on each network, depending on the web usage.

That said, simply check your domain stats to find out what your top ad domains are. (I could tell what mine are, but this would not help you.)

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

thekochs — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 15:45:31 GMT

I see ads.flurry.com

Curious, adding ads.flurry.com to the "Always Block" list is not going to break anything as far as IE11 or something ?

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

rotblitz — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 15:52:20 GMT

Is this a question? Or an experience? And what should this have to do with IE11?

What evident effect would you have expected by blocking ads.flurry.com ? You'll not see content from them anymore.

Re: Is OpenDNS deliberately not blocking add services?

thekochs — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 16:12:58 GMT

It was a newbie "what will it affect" general question.
I'll ad and see.

Thx !