A new reason to love OpenDNS: no more ads (2014)
opendns.com
opendns.com
No idea how this is on the front page, this is literally years-old news.
We haven't shown ads or done nxdomain redirection for more than two years.
We are, however, probably one of the best and easiest things you can do to raise the bar for user security on the Internet. We're also part of Cisco now[1].
1: https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?articleId=1...
I just attended a distributor's webinar where this was introduced as a new "Cisco Innovation".
Mods, please add 2014 to the title of this post.
To me, this is actually “we’ve fixed the main reason to hate OpenDNS” rather than a new reason to love OpenDNS. I know that others there, non-technical others, also hated the behaviour.
From the other comments, I see that they actually stopped this horrible practice 2 years ago, and that this news is just out of date. But my thought is that I still wouldn't trust them with my DNS handling after making such a horrible move back then. It was such a major mistake that I have to worry they'll make other bone-headed decisions, too, and I just can't trust them with something that important.
Why would anyone ever want to use a service that did that? I guess it's good that they're not doing that anymore, but that's really awful.
Hacking NXDOMAIN was a workaround that also happened to pay their bills. It was never a particularly good decision, but we need to evaluate it from the point of view of what was or wasn't feasible 10 years ago.
this change is over two years old :|
A web without ads. Too good to be true.
Let's say OpenDNS and Google changed their DNS servers to resolve all ad domains to 127.0.0.1.
It is a private choice to decide to use those DNS servers, but such a large percentage of the public uses them that this would no doubt impact nearly all ad networks and websites.
Those ad networks might even die off completely! And that'd just be terrible, really; however would people get by without being advertised at?
(Ideally you'd want the ad domains to not resolve at all, though, rather than resolving to localhost.)
I don't see how someone adjusting a service that they completely own and control to provide a more useful service would fall anywhere near a "line". That line is entirely drawn by the owners and operators of the service, and people can always choose to use a different service if they don't like that.
(That said, ad networks have sadly gotten sophisticated enough that DNS blacklists alone won't suffice, and could potentially break sites.)
That's all well and good until whatever business you run competes with the DNS provider or offends them in some way and they stop resolving your domain name. You're not going to say, "well, people can stop using Google's DNS if they really want to use my service".
But love them or hate them, they're vital for many companies' and websites' revenue. If big tech companies started implementing anti-ad features by default, there would be chaos.
That said, any anti-ad features need to avoid breaking things for users, and it'd be entirely too easy to break a simplistic DNS-based ad-blocker in ways that would end up hurting users. Client-side ad blocking can take more sophisticated steps, both to deal with anti-adblocking technologies, and to give users feedback and recourses if something goes wrong.
That would be the point wouldn't it ?
At this point, I'm surprised no one has picked up a sniper rifle and started systematically picking off the CEO of every single online ad agency one by one until no one wanted the job anymore. You know, maybe someone who has just a few months left to live and who wants to do something good for humanity before they leave.
I'm not saying someone should, just that it wouldn't surprise me if someone did.
Redirecting "free" users to ads when they mistype domains was not a "neutral" move either.