topic Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content in OpenDNS

Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

b_g — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 02:27:31 GMT

Hi, I've been using OpenDNS for almost two years with good success until...

My 10 year old son, who is understandably curious about sex searched for "sex videos" on the Firefox default yahoo search engine. He came up with long lists of hardcore porn videos, and when you move the mouse over then, they show the entire video at a reduced, but still quite graphic, size. I really don't think that watching close ups of penetration (and other much less -uh- "mainstream" behaviors) is an appropriate level of education for his age. I've already removed yahoo from the default search engine list. Any other suggestions for dealing with this proxy porn host? And yes, I'm working on the user end of this problem, too.

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

mattwilson9090 — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 07:06:56 GMT

OpenDNS has no way to control the webpages, content, URL's or anything else that you see. All it does is lookup domain names, and if you haven't blocked them or the category they belong to, return the results. This can make things difficult with search engines that "preview" content this way without actually visiting the associated website.

If you are concerned about the results that search engines can return you should block the search engines category and then whitelist whatever search engine or engines that don't provide results you don't want. This can cause problems with other sites that might also share or use a domain name that is blocked.

Alternatively you could just block the yahoo search engine in OpenDNS by blacklisting whichever domain name it uses. Of course that would likely prevent you from accessing all sorts of yahoo content.

Regardless of what you do you should make sure that whatever devices your son is using are not ones that he has administrative access to or he'll be able to change or reverse any changes you make.

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

rotblitz — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 10:37:59 GMT

Also, for your issue Yahoo's SafeSearch feature is the way to go. You even can make it permanent.

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

rotblitz — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 14:21:51 GMT

Looking a bit deeper, it seems you can proceed as follows:

Adding sp.yimg.com to the "always block" list should block all video thumbnail images.
Adding video.search.yahoo.com to the "always block" list should prevent from playing the videos when clicking the thumbnails.

However, as mattwilson9090 said, it will block more than you expect.

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

b_g — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 23:43:57 GMT

Thanks for the feedback. Is there a list somewhere of known holes like this and workarounds?

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

rotblitz — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 08:27:28 GMT

As this is neither a hole nor needs a workaround, there is not list. Or what exactly do you mean?

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

b_g — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 10:55:19 GMT

Well as mattwilson9090 stated, OpenDNS doesn't block content, it blocks domain names.

From a user's perspective, it's rarely the domain name that needs to be blocked. It's the content. So from my perspective as a user, trying to protect my kids, OpenDNS as a content filter has holes, the yahoo video search page as an example. And quite obviously, OpenDNS selects domain names to block based on the content found at the IP addresses associated with those names.

If you find the word "hole" offensive, I'll rephrase my question: Is there a list of named domains where a user such as myself would want to take extra steps to block the content?

Thanks again.

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

rotblitz — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 11:33:24 GMT

Your view is wrong. OpenDNS is foremost a recursive DNS service. It deals with name resolution for domain names only, not with content, web pages or anything else. So only domain name resolution can be blocked, not anything else. This blocking is an additional OpenDNS feature beyond pure DNS.

"OpenDNS as a content filter has holes, the yahoo video search page as an example."

I still do not understand. Why is the Yahoo video search a hole for what? If you want it blocked by OpenDNS, you can do so as I have explained above. And not everybody would like the Yahoo video search being blocked.

"And quite obviously, OpenDNS selects domain names to block based on the content"

This is not obvious, but totally wrong. Categorization is a pure manual community effort, not something like an "OpenDNS selection".
https://community.opendns.com/domaintagging/faq/
You are invited to participate as much as you want.

"content found at the IP addresses associated with those names" - Especially this not, in no way!

"Is there a list of named domains where a user such as myself would want to take extra steps to block the content?"

Certainly, look around in the internet. You'll find lists of domain names everywhere, in form of hosts files to be utilized on computers where hosts files are being used. There are lists of malware domains and for nearly every other sort of website categories.

However, how should anybody know what "a user such as myself would want"? We are not mind-readers. This is very individual, far from being common sense. It's solely your own decision what you want to block.

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

b_g — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 01:28:10 GMT

You're doing more harm here than good. That's about as politely as I can put it.

You recursively tell me that I'm wrong, and that you don't understand. If the latter, then you can't reasonably claim the former.

You invite me to join the community, but I'm hardly getting a warm fuzzy feeling at the front door.

Quite frankly, it kind of stinks in here, and you're the only one I've met.

Bye.

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

mattwilson9090 — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 02:00:07 GMT

Actually, two people have been commenting in this thread besides you. I also have no idea what you mean by holes and workarounds. I stated what OpenDNS can and cannot do, and rotblitz further amplified my response with some specific domains that you could block that would eliminate the behavior you were first concerned about, as well as recommending using Yahoo's safe search feature.

As for a list on the internet of things to take precautions about that is a huge topic and we can't even begin to answer that without knowing what kind of things you are concerned about.

Search engines in particular can be problematic if you are concerned about content because many of them "preview" the content from their own servers or domain names and methods of preventing that such as filtering based on domain name or even URL often won't work as a result. Many of the search engines have a "safe search" feature, but they are generally difficult to enforce for all devices on a network because they are often "opt in" options managed with an individual browser on an individual computer. Generally speaking, to enforce them you need a local DNS server and/or proxy server to do so, and it's not something that OpenDNS can do for you.

Re: Yahoo search showing porn videos with full content

rotblitz — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 10:22:24 GMT

"You're doing more harm here than good."

Sad to hear. I thought I was of help with exactly describing your options and how things work. If I missed anything, please let me know.