Thursday, August 7, 2008

Using OpenDNS for Phishing Protection

Rob Griffiths:

Changing your DNS servers isn’t very difficult to do, and by using OpenDNS, you’ll get the benefit of an active and constantly-updated anti-phishing tool, regardless of your browser of choice. If you don’t feel you’ll always be able to spot a potential phishing scam in your e-mail, using OpenDNS is a great solution that will allow you to keep using Safari with some peace of mind.

Via John Gruber, who says “it makes web surfing noticeably faster than using the default DNS servers I get from Comcast.”

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Please don't give any more attention to the goblins over at 'OpenDNS'

It's not Open in any sense, and it's not even DNS! The anti-phishing bullshit breaks DNS, and so does their policy of hijacking all unregistered domains for showing web ads.

If you want faster, more reliable public DNS, use:
4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3

OpenDNS does provide a certain level of protection.

However, before it can be recommended it as a reliable solution, try to find some of the recent phishing emails and see if OpenDNS/PhishTank can detect the forgery. I did it myself and 8 times out of 10, the link was not registered in PhishTank database. This database is currently maintained by volunteers and sadly it cannot guarantee 100% protection against phishing.

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