Want a content filter to keep people from viewing "unfit" websites?
Want something very easy to setup?
Want something for your home?
Props to Andrew for finding ScrubIT ... a free DNS service that essentially "washes" out any bad websites requested from your network.
Setup is very simple. Just change the DNS settings on your router and taadaa, your web traffic is now being washed.
I've been looking for something to use at home for a while ... so figured I'd give ScrubIT a try. A simple change to the DNS settings on my D-Link router and that's it.
Now if I try to surf to whitehouse.com I get the following message in my browser:
Kewl! I'll have to read up more about ScrubIT for larger scale use, but for home users this is a great simple solution. 2 thumbs up!
Andrew has more details about ScrubIT ... so go check out his blog.
I commented on this at Brian Glass's blog http://brianglass.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/scrubit/ so I won't repeat what I wrote there.
However, whitehouse.com does illustrate a problem with this filtering. When I visit whitehouse.com I see
"Search from Over 100 Million Listings in our White Pages and Yellow Pages"
The guy who set up a porn site there had a change of heart a few years ago (it had to do with realizing that pornography could be a bad influence on his own child) and sold it with the requirement that it not have any bad content.
Posted by: Bob Brown | March 02, 2007 at 11:36 AM
Awesome! I've been looking for something like this to use at home. Thanks, man...
At the church, we recently setup a couple of Linux virtual machines running Squid/DansGuardian to filter Internet content. This has been working pretty well for us (and cost us nothing...gotta love open source).
Donnie
Posted by: Donnie Schexnayder | March 02, 2007 at 11:54 AM
Thanks for posting this, man. Just what I needed for the home network. I've posted it on my blog as well.
Posted by: allen madding | March 04, 2007 at 10:50 PM
In light of the "drive-by pharming" alert from Symantec and Indiana University, about the ability to update a home router's DNS servers to a nasty one...how do you "trust" ScrubIT? I mean really, how do you truly trust that they will not get hacked themselves, or anything else? Tough one...you have to weigh the fear of possibly getting to a clone of PayPal or a bank and losing money, against the fear of unfiltered internet content (at the router level at least).
Posted by: Tom Templin | March 07, 2007 at 06:36 PM
DNS can be manually configured on your PC bypassing the DNS configured on your router. The ScrubIT filter is a poor network "trick". Better to use a true filter service.
Posted by: Eric | September 25, 2007 at 09:48 PM
@Eric: True, but many firewalls can be configured to force DNS traffic to a particular IP address. Also, your average work desktop *should* have its network settings locked down.
Posted by: Scott | September 26, 2007 at 01:18 PM
OpenDNS is definitely the way forward not only because of its powerful filtering abilities (which means your users don't accidentally reach the seedier sites) but also because it has powerful shortcut tools, protects against DNS spoofing and other features.
http://www.sciencetext.com/switch-on-to-opendns-really-take-back-the-internet.html
Posted by: Brian Brain | September 01, 2008 at 03:51 AM