OpenDNS won't stop blocking a website

[threehappypenguins]

For some reason Snapchat is blocked and I can't figure out why. When I try to access it, I'm blocked and it states, "This site was categorized in: Instant Messaging, Chat, Video Sharing, Photo Sharing"

NONE of those categories are checked off (I have custom settings). I tried ipconfig /flushdns and it's still not working. It's been hours. What is going on?

[rotblitz]

Check your blocked domains at https://dashboard.opendns.com/stats/all/blockeddomains to see what related domains are blocked, and add those to your "never block" list.

If you want to know why it is blocked for your, post the following command output:
nslookup example.com.
where example.com is the domain name being blocked as found in your stats.

""This site was categorized in: Instant Messaging, Chat, Video Sharing, Photo Sharing""
"NONE of those categories are checked off (I have custom settings)."

Don't worry.  This is for your information only.  It is not the reason why it is blocked for you.

[threehappypenguins]

YouTube is doing it now too. I whitelisted just snapchat.com, and I can access the website now. I am trying to determine if snapchat works now. Last night while scrolling through the stats, it showed that l.google.com was blocked (feelinsonice.appspot.com is a snapchat server; and in nslookup the name of the server is appspot.l.google.com). But when I would click on it, it would say, "This domain is no longer blocked."

Now this morning, YouTube is doing the same thing. I can see *.youtube.com in the list of blocked domains, but when I click on it, it would say "This domain is no longer blocked." Yet when I go to youtube.com it is blocked by OpenDNS.

The following was my nslookup for youtube.com:

C:\Windows\system32>nslookup youtube.com
Server: (myserver)
Address: 192.168.1.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: youtube.com
Addresses: 2607:f8b0:400d:c01::5d
173.237.115.231
173.237.115.216
173.237.115.232
173.237.115.227
173.237.115.221
173.237.115.217
173.237.115.226
173.237.115.247
173.237.115.251
173.237.115.242
173.237.115.236
173.237.115.241
173.237.115.246
173.237.115.212
173.237.115.237
173.237.115.222

And I checked feelinsonice.appspot.com:

C:\Windows\system32>nslookup feelinsonice.appspot.com
Server: Kubik
Address: 192.168.1.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: appspot.l.google.com
Address: 67.215.65.130
Aliases: feelinsonice.appspot.com

I have checked off "Search Engines" in OpenDNS to block all search engines and then whitelisted Bing. The reason is because Google was being used for searching explicit images. Now, I could use Google SafeSearch, but all a user has to do is clear the cookies and it renders it useless. Bing, on the other hand, does not search for explicit images unless you go to explicit.bing.net (which is already blocked by OpenDNS if the pornography and adult content categories are ticked off).

So I've had to monitor the stats to see necessary google sites being accessed (mail.google.com, accounts.google.com, www.youtube-nocookie.com, etc).

I don't understand what is going on. The domain youtube.com is *only* categorized as Video Sharing. So I should at least be able to get to the domain. I understand that YouTube might use some services (from Google) that are categorized under search engine, but I had whitelisted a bunch of them that were being blocked. And YouTube worked fine yesterday.

[threehappypenguins]

Uggghhh! It's doing it to talkgadget.google.com! It's categorized as Instant Messaging, Chat, so it shouldn't be blocked. Did another nslookup:

C:\Windows\System32>nslookup talkgadget.google.com
Server: (myserver)
Address: 192.168.1.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: talkgadget.l.google.com
Address: 67.215.65.130
Aliases: talkgadget.google.com

[threehappypenguins]

I need to edit one of my previous messages (need to take out the server name). Is there any way to do that. I wanted to change it to (myserver) for security purposes.

[rotblitz]

According to your nslookup, youtube.com itself is not blocked, but subdomains or CDN domains (like www.youtube.com or ytimg.com) may still be blocked though.  This cannot be seen from your posting.  YouTube use so many many domains...

feelinsonice.appspot.com is an alias for appspot.l.google.com which is apparently blocked by your settings.  67.215.65.130 (hit-adult.opendns.com) indicates that it is blocked by category.  Same for talkgadget.google.com being an alias for talkgadget.l.google.com.

"I don't understand what is going on"

But I understand.  Also real names of aliases (CNAMEs) are effective for blacklisting or whitelisting, of course, to prevent from circumventing with another name..

"I understand that YouTube might use some services (from Google)"

No, even more, YouTube is Google.  If you block major parts of Google, it renders YouTube unusable too.  They share many domains and their aliases.

[threehappypenguins]

www.youtube.com is already whitelisted, and I whitelisted ytimg.com after you suggestion and its still not working. I just need to figure out how it loads its videos so I can whitelist it... uggghhhhh!

I wish there was some kind of workaround. I tried the other way around where I blocked google images by blacklisting:

gstatic.com
t0.gstatic.com
t1.gstatic.com
t2.gstatic.com
t3.gstatic.com
tbn.l.google.com

It works... kind of. But the first few images still show up. Tried Googling and I can't find a workaround for that either (so far). I just simply want to block Google images (completely) and allow YouTube. Why does this have to be so difficult?! Hasn't ANYONE out there had any success?!

[rotblitz]

"I just need to figure out how it loads its videos so I can whitelist it."

This tool may be of big use: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dns_query_sniffer.html

"I just simply want to block Google images (completely) and allow YouTube. Why does this have to be so difficult?!"

Because of Google.  Some images are embedded in the HTML, not distinct image objects.  There is no way to block this with DNS methods.  SafeSearch is the way to go.
See also https://support.opendns.com/categories/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=google+image+search&for_search=1

[rotblitz]

gstatic.com
t0.gstatic.com
t1.gstatic.com
t2.gstatic.com
t3.gstatic.com

This is nonsense.  The entry gstatic.com already covers this and all subdomains, as general with any such whitelist/blacklist entries.

[threehappypenguins]

I figured that. But I just added them anyway to see if something magical - like Google images being blocked - would happen. Still can't find out why the first set of Google images isn't being blocked. This is craaaazy.

[threehappypenguins]

Safesearch is useless. You just have to clear the cookies and then be on your merry explicit images way.

[threehappypenguins]

As for YouTube, I figured it out. I right clicked on the page, went to source and started looking and various domains it was calling on; one of which is googlevideo.com

I whitelisted it, and, BINGO! Videos are streaming fine now. So I needed to whitelist youtube.com and googlevideo.com. I might still have needed ytimg.com whitelisted too. I'm going to take it off the whitelist and see what happens. I've run out of room, so I need to get stuff off there that don't need to be whitelisted.

[cindelicato]

Safesearch is useless. You just have to clear the cookies and then be on your merry explicit images way.

I have to disagree; if you follow directions (and do not let kids use your Google account) you can pretty well lock-down most (but certainly not all) explicit results.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/144686

[rotblitz]

"Still can't find out why the first set of Google images isn't being blocked. This is craaaazy."

I said it already:  Some images are embedded in the HTML, not distinct image objects.  You can block/whitelist domains only, not webpages, not part of webpages, not images, not keywords, not anything else.

"Safesearch is useless. You just have to clear the cookies and then be on your merry explicit images way."

Nope, you can make SafeSearch persistent.  It cannot be disabled by regular users then.  See the Google documentation.

[threehappypenguins]

"I said it already:  Some images are embedded in the HTML, not distinct image objects.  You can block/whitelist domains only, not webpages, not part of webpages, not images, not keywords, not anything else."

I didn't see your comment until after I replied the first time. Sorry.

As for Safesearch, I DID lock it. With each and every browser. Then I experimented by clearing the cookies. And it was as if I never set Safe Search at all. Plus, the user can simply download another browser as a workaround. For example, I don't have Opera. So the user can go to Opera and download the browser.

Google Safe Search is not *truly* lockable if all it goes on is the cookies and the cookies can be deleted.