More granularity to the Web Content Filtering feature and/or the statistics module
Add more granularity to the Web Content Filtering feature and/or the statistics module
1)
Currently, it is possible to filter the Web content through 3 ways:
a-Choose a filtering level (high, medium..)
b-block multiples categories (Chat, Drugs...)
c-block individual domains
I think that a filtering level between the level b) & c) is missing and some users activity and question suggest it.
Let's take a real example from my experience.
As a parent, I would like to block the Android Snapchat application.
After some search within your forum, it seems that I have to block two domains:
* feelinsonice.appspot.com and feelinsonice-hrd.appspot.com.
Another user suggests blocking data.flurry.com too.
After some trial and error, my daughter could not use it anymore with her smartphone at home.
And what if they decide to change the domain name tomorrow ?
It is an error-prone and time-consuming task to check if the application is unavailable through my Phone.
Same thing for Facebook with their multiple domains: faceook.com, facebook.net ...
My suggestion would be to add an application level for majors companies/internet usage (I know it is a blur definition..) such as facebook, facebook mobile, snapchat.
It could be a community based database or ovverided/redefined by the user itself.
2) Also this suggestion makes more senses in the statistics section with the table displaying the domains.
Let's take a example of the top domains for one day:
Rank Domain Requests
1 *.ytimg.com 20
2 b-graph.facebook.com 18
3 wpad.lan 17
4 safebrowsing-cache.google.com 17
5 *.youtube.com 15
6 *.clients.google.com 14
7 accounts.google.com 14
8 graph.facebook.com 14
9 kshowonline.com 13
10 ssl.gstatic.com 12
11 safebrowsing.google.com 12
12 www.googleapis.com 11
13 api.facebook.com
As a user, this type of data may be too unrefined.
Indeed, I deduce from those 13 lines that Google and Facebook applications where used today.
It answers to the question:
Which Websites or Applications were used today by my daughter ? The various domains does not interested me.
Fine below what I consider a User-Friendly aggregation:
Rank Application Requests
1 +Facebook 150
2 +Google Search 125
Obviously, such presentation will be not replace the previous one but be really helpful
for high level user or user in a hurry that do not want to read all the 25 pages of statistics
If needed, clicking on the + button will expan a tree with the related domains.
Rank Application Requests
1 -Facebook 150
. b-graph.facebook.com 100
. api.facebook.com 50
2 -Google Search 125
.safebrowsing.google.com 33
.www.googleapis.com
I understand that a domain may be used within many application level such as Gmail, Google plus and so on.
Thanks for reading me.
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I agree that the long list of domains is not all that helpful in determining who was surfing to which sites. I myself am trying to block my wife from doing clothing shopping online. I do not want to block everything, but just her favorites. Also, it would be nice to be able to browse to a blocked site and then allow for a password to be entered to allow access to the site.
So, yes, in short it would be nice to have an aggregated view with grouped domains under a web application like Facebook.
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OpenDNS, just as any DNS site does not determine what sites were visited or what apps were used. All that it does is do DNS lookups, blacklist or whitelist them in accordance with your settings, and return the results to wherever asked for the lookup. It has no way to know if that lookup was initiated by an app, website, or some other application. If something uses an IP address to directly access something on the internet OpenDNS won't know about it. Also, if a lookup for a domain has already been done and resides in a local cache somewhere OpenDNS won't know about it and won't log any additional activity.
Just as with anything else on OpenDNS if you want to block a specific site you need to either block the category that it belongs to or blacklist that sites domain. Be aware, if you are blocking individual domains, sometimes you will need to block multiple domains to block everything.
The ability to bypass a domain block already exists with either a passcode or bypass account. However it is not available for the OpenDNS free service, you'll need to use one of the pay services if that you want that ability.
As for some sort of aggregated view, although it might be useful, I don't see OpenDNS adding that to their free product, though something might be possible with one or more of the pay products. However, even if they do it will not identify web applications or anything else. It will only identify DNS lookups that were done. Which could mean that if you are visiting an entirely different website, such as a sports site, it could have links or other content that requires a lookup of a FaceBook domain without anyone actually visiting that site or using one of their apps.
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