Email Notification When you disable a customers protection without their Consent

[petarded100]

You need to change two things about your service - I've found multiple times you (OpenDNS) disables my network without my consent and for no good reason, it's an actively used network and you have a major flaw on your back end that auto-disables even if you are using a working Updater Client. I've dealt with support and they have not been able to identify a fix over the past 6 months of issues.   I still suggest as first priority you fix the major flaw... however, as a precaution I propose the following:
1.) If for ANY reason a network goes inactive (by staff AND/OR. by timeout) especially for a paying customer, you should ALWAYS send an immediate notification that the customer is no longer being protected. You should also send notification 5 days in advance if a network has not been updated and it's getting close to being marked inactive giving the customer time to resolve the issue without service interruption.

2.) The real fix here is that you should never disable a active network, timeouts make no sense at all and serve no purpose. Not sending ANY notification of service being disabled that wasn't directly initiated by the customer is entirely UNACCEPTABLE.

Keep in mind your service is supposed to do only one simple thing.... Block sites I don't want my kids visiting. When you disable my paid service multiple times (6 times now, it's happening every month) you are not fulfilling your ONLY purpose. Effectively making your service more dangerous than having no protection at all, because you are giving the illusion of protection while not actually blocking the sites I pay you to block.

[rotblitz]

I'm just a user, but I want to comment as follows:

Nobody disables your protection.  If they set your network to "inactive", manually or automatically, protection is already over and gone, because you keep an IP address registered you do no longer own or not own at all, because it is shared, and you prevent another user to register this IP address which is currently owned by him/her.

"If for ANY reason a network goes inactive ... you should ALWAYS send an immediate notification that the customer is no longer being protected."

Agreed, the customer/user should be notified, independent from paying or not, but not that (s)he is no longer protected, because (s)he is not protected anyway when this happens.

"The real fix here is that you should never disable a active network"

Even not if there is evidence that someone doesn't own the registered IP address?   What would you say if you were prevented from registering your current IP address with your network, because another user still keeps it registered?  You came here to complain because of this, wouldn't you?

My suggestion is to ensure that you run an Updater, and that this Updater does its job properly and especially in time.  If you did, you would not face these problems.  Something is wrong with your update process, or you are behind a shared IP address range.  If the latter, then you cannot use OpenDNS with a dashboard anyway.  Your IP address must be a dedicated and public one.

[petarded100]

You make the incorrect assumption that my IP is no longer active. And that is the same mistake that the first line of OpenDNS support was making. It took reaching 2nd/3rd to identify that OpenDNS has an issue with its timer and its disabling perfectly good, working, active protecting, correct IP with a very recent IP validation from the Updater client. My IP has NOT changed in months yet it's being disabled every 30ish days. They have a major flaw in their current system.

I agree with you that if my IP changed that it should be released (with notification) but thats not whats happening and I was directed here by support to post their bug as a suggestion in addition to them escalating internally.

[rotblitz]

Ok, can you please post the complete plain text output of the following command here:

nslookup -type=txt debug.opendns.com.

[petarded100]

Here it is:

Server: resolver1.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.222.222

Non-authoritative answer:
debug.opendns.com text =

"server 3.ash"
debug.opendns.com text =

"flags 20 0 2fe f207f6040009ceb"
debug.opendns.com text =

"id 16132789"
debug.opendns.com text =

"source 71.235.217.206:49533"

C:\

[petarded100]

For the record, I have a Home PC connected to a wireless router with Comcast as my service. That is the only device with the OpenDNS updater installed. I have Comcast and for the most part, their IP's are static if you stay active (mine is active 24/7/365, except for the few times a year there's a power outage or something to disrupt it). I have the updater and it runs more than once a day on my PC. I have the DNS entries on the router its self to ensure all traffic is captured by OpenDNS (e.g. guest devices, iphones and such that come on my network are filtered. 

Every day this week, including today the Update ran and confirmed it successfully updated... However I know that in about a weeks time from now, the faulty OpenDNS backend timer will assume my network is inactive and disable it. Even though every day I can see a listing of all the activity and blocked sites on the Dashboard... next thing I know.. my protection has ended due to OpenDNS timing out my network.

It's still unclear to me HOW come there is a timeout at all.. it's pointless.  What are the 1 in trillion chances that my IP changes, the DNS updater doesn't report the new IP, and coincidentally the device getting my IP actually has the DNS addresses manually set in their router/PC configuration... it doesn't make any sense.. chances of this happening are near zero.

there is a much better way to handle this, OpenDNS is taking the 1980's style approach to IT services.. it's time to advance a few decades and actually have SLA's, timers, notification, customer engagement, accountability for the services provided.... not just disable your network and have a who gives a crap, we got their money attitude.

I'm normally a very understanding flexible person, but after 6 times having my protection turned off I can't trust OpenDNS... it's more dangerous than not having protection at all. because it's giving me the false expectation, an illusion if you will.. that I'm protected when at any moment it can be turned off without my knowledge.  

[Brian Hartvigsen]

Generally speaking I would encourage you that if you think there is a flaw with the service or something fishy going on with your account to contact support directly.

In this case it looks like your network settings were disabled because you sent a dynamic IP update trying to update to an IP address currently registered to another OpenDNS user.  This would have returned a !yours error and the OpenDNS' official Dynamic IP updater [Windows][OSX]would have given you an error message indicating the specific reason for this failure and encouraging you to contact support.

When you send the update, we know that you are no longer at your previous IP address and so we deactivate that IP from your account.  This prevents this exact behavior from happening to someone else and keeps you from accidentally applying your settings to an unsuspecting OpenDNS user.  As soon as we see a Dynamic IP update from a non-registered IP address your network will immediately reactivate and your settings will be applied.

Of course we can't automatically give you the IP address that is registered to another user as this would cause the exact behavior you are indicating in your initial post.  However, as we document [1][2], you can open a support ticket to have my team investigate.  We'll review the user's account and network and reach out to the user, if appropriate, to gather more information, request that they release the network IP, or to inform them that we have released the IP in question.

I hope that clears up any confusion on this issue.  Please feel free to respond and let me know if you still have questions!

[edit. I've moved this to community support for the time being as the "feature" you are requesting is already in place to my understanding.  If you have some clarification on how what you would like to see is different from what we do today, please let me know and we can edit your post to reflect that and re-post it to IdeaBank.]

[petarded100]

Hi Brian, I did contact support multiple times and it all ends with "yeah there's something wrong with OpenDNS and it's not on the client end". I have Tickets 39036 and 82243, the last being a back and forth for nearly two months and it's still open as of today. the last direction in that ticket was to post my problem here to get resolution. Are you telling me I need to open ANOTHER ticket with the same problem.. how will that help me, won't I just end up here again after two more months?

I get no such error (!yours), see attached screenshot from just now, as well as in the previous support threads I've forward additional screen shots and diagnostic logs showing everything is functioning correctly with the updater on my PC and I am not receiving ANY errors of any kind.

If you are saying someone else is "taking" my IP incorrectly, then I ask that you block that person because it's false, my IP has not changed, and they clearly do not have and have not had that IP in atleast a year. My IP doesn't change often, it's pretty static, So I don't understand why the issue and why the "Update" is sending the correct IP, but your backend is clearly not listening to the updates...

Also, If you are stating that the "feature" I am asking for is resolved please tell me how I enable email notification for when you disable my network without my consent or knowledge.. EVERYONE at OpenDNS that I have interacted with has been very clear and consistent that you have ZERO notification mechanisms for when you disable a customers service.

I don't mean to be brash, but I'm getting tired of the endless loops from support.. your response doesn't address my issue, it sends me back to "start" and then you move my suggest feature saying it exists when it clearly doesn't... you have essentially ignored me and now buried me somewhere else telling me to open a new ticket when you haven't finished working the previous ticket that sent me here.

 [edit. I couldn't just delete the picture, so I replaced the post and deleted the old post, hope that's okay -- Brian Hartvigsen]

Capture.PNG

[Brian Hartvigsen]

The intention was not to send you back to start, but to explain what had happened.  I could give a concise timeline with details here, but I feel that would compromise your privacy.  As we have now touched base via your ticket, I will provide that information to you there.  I will personally follow up on your ticket to make sure this is resolved to your satisfaction.

[maintenance2]

Hi petarded. I just wanted to point out this:

"It's still unclear to me HOW come there is a timeout at all.. it's pointless.  What are the 1 in trillion chances that my IP changes, the DNS updater doesn't report the new IP, and coincidentally the device getting my IP actually has the DNS addresses manually set in their router/PC configuration... it doesn't make any sense.. chances of this happening are near zero."

Is nowhere near zero, and happens all the time when people don't keep their Networks properly updated. It may happen less than it used to do due to some changes in these measures, I don't know

But you are having some sort of, let's call it idiopathic, problem. Which is why there is a problem in fixing it for you. I have a nearly static IP (some people call them "sticky"), and I never have this issue. Not even when there was a network outage and my IP changed. (Or when it changed back again and they gave me back the original IP I'd had for years.) I don't even run an updater because my IP is, for all practical purposes, static.

I wish both you and the OpenDNS engineers luck in getting this straightened out.

[maintenance2]

Oops, and Brian posted while I was adding my note. :/  I hope everything is working out.

[rotblitz]

@petarded100
Regarding your nslookup output:

Can you visit https://dashboard.opendns.com/stats/16132789/start/ and https://dashboard.opendns.com/settings/16132789/ ?

If yes, then your IP address 71.235.217.206 was correctly registered when you executed the command.
Execute the command again when you face the "inactive" problem with your network.

[rotblitz]

Can you visit - I meant without redirection where this number 16132789 disappears from the URL.  This number must still be contained in the URL.

[Brian Hartvigsen]

The IP was correctly registered to the network and that is not the issue.  I am working with him via his ticket at this time.