Request to notify when page is blocked
Hi there -
I work for CloudApp (www.getcloudapp.com), a popular content capture and sharing platform. We basically make it easy to capture your screen into a GIF or screenshot, insta-upload it into the cloud and then share that link with a coworker or teammate.
We occassionally run into issues with our free users where they use our service to transfer or share content that would be considered a virus or malware. Whenever this happens OpenDNS or Google tends to block the entire service. We've done just about everything we can, including building a malware finding and autoblocking service, but there's still a delay between when we find out about a cl.ly link being blocked, our users getting blocked, and when we have to reach out to you.
Would you consider a feature that alerts the domain owner when a link or content is blocked?
Thanks for considering
Scott Smith
CloudApp
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OpenDNS does not block such things by default. It's the individual users' settings which may block things like URL Shortener or File Storage if this domain category is individually selected or a related domain like cl.ly is individually blocked.
https://domain.opendns.com/cl.lyWith your request of receiving e-mail, you will be bombed with mails given the user base of more than 60 millions.
"a feature that alerts the domain owner when a link or content is blocked"
Links or URLs or content cannot be blocked by a DNS service like OpenDNS, just domain names (DNS lookups) can be blocked. So it is e.g. either cl.ly as a whole or nothing of it being blocked.
To obtain domain owners and their e-mail address in real-time would be another challenge, nearly impossible to achieve technically.
"when we have to reach out to you."
It does not make sense to reach out to me. This forum is mainly visited by users like me. Your best bet to discuss this with OpenDNS staff is to open a support ticket, see "Submit a request" at the top of the page.
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Hey Rotblitz, thanks for your feedback here.
The OpenDNS support team suggested I post here. I'm not asking that each individual user of our service be alerted, I'm asking that we as the domain owners of cl.ly are alerted any time a cl.ly link is blocked or considered to be malware so that we can disable it and OpenDNS can make our service available again.You're correct that they can block a domain -- which means that if they 'block' one of our links because it's considered to be malware, many other users are impacted because they are essentially blocking the domain.
In this case, making it easy to contact domain owners of a service that is being blocked shouldn't actually be that difficult since there wouldn't be 60 million. -
Hi Scott,
It seems like a reasonable request, but I think the devil would be in the details. For example, would domain owners register with us to get notifications, and if so then we have to prove ownership and handle updates in the future. Alternatively if we used WHOIS contact information we'd run into a lot of dead-ends: CL.LY for example has no WHOIS information for the .LY TLD.
Have you considered getting a premium subscription for VirusTotal and using their API to automate discovery? A quick search shows that they are reporting 2-4 bad URLs per day on the CL.LY domain (https://www.virustotal.com/en/domain/cl.ly/information/)?
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"You're correct that they can block a domain -- which means that if they 'block' one of our links because it's considered to be malware, many other users are impacted because they are essentially blocking the domain."
This is not correct and not how it works. These settings take effect only on the one user's network where the user has configured it. It has no impact to anything else.
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