Blocked site ww1.modwerx.com doesn't give reason

bfeely · ‎05-25-2015

I looked up https://domain.opendns.com/ww1.modwerx.com and it said that it inherited Sedo Parking by CNAME (my network blocked parked domains). However, when it got blocked on my end the block page didn't give a reason. Apparently this is a bug in the block page where it doesn't give reasons for domains blocked by CNAME?

mattwilson9090 · ‎05-25-2015

By reason what do you mean?

Generally when something is blocked by OpenDNS you'll see a webpage saying that it blocked something along with a statement that the domain was blocked by category or individually blacklisted. What was the message that you received?

Without knowing what message you actually saw (and not a paraphrase of the message) I can't say anything more than that since this domain is inheriting the categorizations of another domain, that your administrator is blocking that domain either by category or has specifically blacklisted it.

rotblitz · ‎05-25-2015

The block pages generally do not give a reason for blocking. The only place to see the reason is your stats:
https://dashboard.opendns.com/stats/all/blockeddomains
If you see something like: "This domain is categorized as .....", then this is informational only, not a reason. The block page doesn't know the reason.

mattwilson9090 · ‎05-25-2015

Rotblitz, many people would take that "This domain is categorized as ..." information as the reason for something being blocked. It just doesn't give the reason for a domain being categorized as is, or for being blacklisted. In this case we're basically dealing with two different levels of detail for "reason".

rotblitz · ‎05-26-2015

"many people would take that "This domain is categorized as ..." information as the reason for something being blocked."

Agreed, and unfortunately a bit misleading. However, there's a certain statistical likeliness that the category assignment is the reason for a domain being blocked, but there may well be other reasons.

By "reason" I meant the reason why a domain is actually blocked for a certain OpenDNS account in the current scenario and under the current account settings. And this kind of reason can be obtained from the stats only, not from the block page. The block page takes its information from the domain tagging system, not from the user settings.

bfeely · ‎05-26-2015

Just to clarify, the block page shows no categories. If I go to sedoparking.com, which the CNAME resolved to, then I get a little message at the bottom of the screen that says "This site was categorized in: Parked Domains"

However, the block page for ww1.modwerx.com does not have that line. It does show up as parked domains though on the dashboard, but it apparently takes some time for the dashboard to update because sedoparking.com has not yet showed up.

mattwilson9090 · ‎05-26-2015

Then what you need to need to do is suggest that for domains that are inheriting the categorizations for another domain, that it "pass through" whatever caused the "inherited" domain to be blocked. It would need to make clear that the original domain was a CNAME inheriting the categorization for another domain, and what is causing that domain to be blocked, i.e. domain specifically blacklisted or category it belongs to blocked.

This is not a bug. A bug is when something unintentionally does not do what it was meant to. In this case the page just wasn't coded to provide that additional "pass-through" information.

As for the information taking time to show up in your dashboard, that's intentional. The stats on your account are not live statistics. They are generally delayed by at least a few hours, sometimes up to a full day.

rotblitz · ‎05-27-2015

"sedoparking.com has not yet showed up."

It will never show up unless you have explicitly looked it up. The stats show only the domain names having actually been used, not any CNAMEs or real names of CNAMEs.

No matter, OpenDNS did the job in your case. You wanted Parked Domains being blocked, and OpenDNS blocked it for you, even if it was hidden behind a CNAME.

robmgregg · ‎05-29-2015

You are correct, this is the way that OpenDNS currently deals with inherited permissions. I think the best way forward for this would be to create a feature request for the domain categorizations notifications to be passed through when categorizations are inherited in this way. You can create feature requests here. Our Product Managers review this forum frequently and when idea's get community support, we move on them!