Open DNS and its benefits

I've been using and championing OpenDNS since discovering it on here ages ago.
It's funnily not worked for me for a while, but tried again just now and the difference is clear right away. I visit only a handful of sites and forums and I get to know what's the right speed and when things are sluggish, so it's easy to tell OpenDNS is working for me.

[lucevans]

Before signing-up, it's worth reading their privacy policy and bearing in mind that they are a US-based company who will store your look-up requests on servers outside the UK, and are not bound by (and will not abide by) UK data protection laws. Interestingly, under the "mergers and acquisitions" section of their PP, they openly state that all personally identifiable data held on you would be transfered to any acquiring business, who may well not hold the same views on your privacy as the current openDNS ethos (Just imagine if a company like doubleclick bought opendns) . Since the speed improvements are marginal for many VM users, and you already have business with VM, who are accountable under UK data protection law, I would say the benefits don't really outweight the potential risks here.

What are the risks? You are identifiable only by your IP. You can't be spammed. So they know that IP's browsing habits, so what? What on earth do you think they can do to actually cause any issues to you with it?

That's a bit 'tin-foil hat' innit?
OpenDNS works without signing up in any case.
The benefits here are substantial in terms of using OpenDNS & the difference between surfing regularly, or random sites just sitting there trying to load.

[Toto]

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

What are the risks? You are identifiable only by your IP. You can't be spammed. So they know that IP's browsing habits, so what? What on earth do you think they can do to actually cause any issues to you with it?

You are identifiable by your IP address, but only by your ISP. Given the popularity of this system, and their wish to keep it a popular product, I doubt they will go sending off browsing reports to various ISP's.....

That being said, there may be requests made to them for that information from the servers country of origin. I would imagine though that it would be rare, if at all.

[lucevans]

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

What are the risks? You are identifiable only by your IP. You can't be spammed. So they know that IP's browsing habits, so what? What on earth do you think they can do to actually cause any issues to you with it?

Bear in mind that this is purely hypothetical, if opendns were ever to be bought by another company (something which happens rather a lot in the IT world)...

"What on Earth do you think they can do with your IP address?" Are you serious? They will have a record of every website you visit, and can use that data to select adverts that you are more likely to respond to everytime one of their ad-panels appears on any page that has been requested by your IP address (and with VM cable connections, you have to go out of your way to force a change to your IP - so to all intents and purposes, we have static IP addresses). If you sign up for the "free account with added benefits" (which most uninformed punters will - afterall, it's something for "free" isn't it?) then they'll also have your name, address, e-mail, etc. and things could start to get really creepy - personalized messages containing your private details appearing in ad-panes on websites you've never been to before, e-mails out-of-the-blue with friendly, over-familiar messages saying "since you were looking at such-and-such on the web yesterday at 2.15pm, we thought you'd like to hear about our new product...". And before you say "ah, but they're not allowed to do that" don't forget: they're not bound by UK data protection or privacy laws, and the US equivalents are so weak as to be a joke- were opendns to be bought by someone like doubleclick, it would be like Facebook Beacon applied to virtually every website you're likely to visit (except the BBC - God bless 'em for not carrying advertising!)
This isn't paranoia; it's the dream business model for all advertisers, and I'm not the only one who doesn't want to be tracked by people whose sole purpose in life is to part me from my hard-earned cash. At best, I find advertising to be a minor annoyance, at worst it's downright intrusive. I don't need to be told what I want to buy - I know what I want to buy, and I'm quite capable of finding it myself.

Glad I got that off my chest- I'm off to find my tin-foil hat now. It keeps me warm at night and stops the aliens reading my thoughts...

Originally Posted by lucevans

Bear in mind that this is purely hypothetical, if opendns were ever to be bought by another company (something which happens rather a lot in the IT world)...

"What on Earth do you think they can do with your IP address?" Are you serious? They will have a record of every website you visit, and can use that data to select adverts that you are more likely to respond to everytime one of their ad-panels appears on any page that has been requested by your IP address (and with VM cable connections, you have to go out of your way to force a change to your IP - so to all intents and purposes, we have static IP addresses). If you sign up for the "free account with added benefits" (which most uninformed punters will - afterall, it's something for "free" isn't it?) then they'll also have your name, address, e-mail, etc. and things could start to get really creepy - personalized messages containing your private details appearing in ad-panes on websites you've never been to before, e-mails out-of-the-blue with friendly, over-familiar messages saying "since you were looking at such-and-such on the web yesterday at 2.15pm, we thought you'd like to hear about our new product...". And before you say "ah, but they're not allowed to do that" don't forget: they're not bound by UK data protection or privacy laws, and the US equivalents are so weak as to be a joke- were opendns to be bought by someone like doubleclick, it would be like Facebook Beacon applied to virtually every website you're likely to visit (except the BBC - God bless 'em for not carrying advertising!)
This isn't paranoia; it's the dream business model for all advertisers, and I'm not the only one who doesn't want to be tracked by people whose sole purpose in life is to part me from my hard-earned cash. At best, I find advertising to be a minor annoyance, at worst it's downright intrusive. I don't need to be told what I want to buy - I know what I want to buy, and I'm quite capable of finding it myself.

Glad I got that off my chest- I'm off to find my tin-foil hat now. It keeps me warm at night and stops the aliens reading my thoughts...

Mmm. So you couldn't then just change away from their DNS servers and bypass any proxying and supplying of ads then? If it ever started.

[Cobbydaler]

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

Mmm. So you couldn't then just change away from their DNS servers and bypass any proxying and supplying of ads then? If it ever started.

Or use an ad blocker?

[lucevans]

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

Mmm. So you couldn't then just change away from their DNS servers and bypass any proxying and supplying of ads then? If it ever started.

Yes you could. I'm just pointing out that people should consider what they're agreeing to and how their data could potentially be used. It is a sad fact that many great ideas on the internet that start-out with noble aims get hijacked by capitalists eventually; particularly if they have money-making potential...and opendns certainly does.

[dev]

Originally Posted by lucevans

Before signing-up, it's worth reading their privacy policy and bearing in mind that they are a US-based company who will store your look-up requests on servers outside the UK, and are not bound by (and will not abide by) UK data protection laws. Interestingly, under the "mergers and acquisitions" section of their PP, they openly state that all personally identifiable data held on you would be transfered to any acquiring business, who may well not hold the same views on your privacy as the current openDNS ethos (Just imagine if a company like doubleclick bought opendns) . Since the speed improvements are marginal for many VM users, and you already have business with VM, who are accountable under UK data protection law, I would say the benefits don't really outweight the potential risks here.

if a company bought opendns that was a suspect business, i'd question why the hell opendns sold the business to them.

the only downside to opendns is when resolving domains that use geoip data to give you a result back. the opendns IPs afaik return back an american location and so anyone using opendns would be routed to the american servers instead of a more local one (if the site uses the geoip data)

[Matth]

They caused a bit of an upset with their cool/ugly (depending on how you look at it) hack to get around problems caused by a bit of google redirection junkware, so they could show their customized search instead of the computer suppliers customized (and very ad cluttered) google search - as well as fixing other issues like getting shortcuts to work.

Far better to simply recommend uninstalling the new PC foistware, or preferably boycott all suppliers who go for this user-unhelpful garbage.

[Morden]

Unlike Domain server DNS implmentation which is securely locked down safely, open DNS can be hacked.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/techn...fm?newsid=6600

As long as you check your site certificates you should be ok as you cant hack them.

[downquark1]

Originally Posted by Morden

Unlike Domain server DNS implmentation which is securely locked down safely, open DNS can be hacked.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/techn...fm?newsid=6600

As long as you check your site certificates you should be ok as you cant hack them.

I think your confusing two different things.

[dev]

Originally Posted by Morden

Unlike Domain server DNS implmentation which is securely locked down safely, open DNS can be hacked.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/techn...fm?newsid=6600

As long as you check your site certificates you should be ok as you cant hack them.

that has nothing to do with opendns, if what the article says happens to you, you'll no longer be using opendns so it would be you that would be hacked not opendns

[xpod]

When i first used OpenDNS it did vastly improve browsing speeds at the time and the porn filtering was quite handy too.
Still use it all now and again but things change here so often that i often forget to change the DNS back over to whatever i`m using at the time

Good stuff though.