With Internet safety, be prepared, not paranoid
By Mark Joseph Edwards
Some parts of the Internet are incredibly dangerous, but there's help along the way to protect you.
This week, I'll tell you about a half-dozen excellent free security tools that help defend you against phishing scams, spyware, adware, and dangerous programs.
OpenDNS: free antiphishing for your network
A reader wrote to me recently about the nagging problem of managing phishing protection on several computers. The main problem was the issue of having to install and update the toolbars on the different desktops, which, of course, can take a lot of time.
A while ago, I learned about a good solution to this problem that offers antiphishing protection using DNS (Domain Name Service) instead of toolbars or custom desktop security applications. The solution, called OpenDNS, is freely available to anyone who wants to use it.
In order to understand how OpenDNS works, you first need to understand how DNS works. DNS is like a phone book for the Internet, mapping domain names to IP addresses. This means that when you type WindowsSecrets.com into your Web browser, for example, your operating system queries the DNS servers configured in your network settings. The DNS servers look up the IP address that matches the domain name and return that IP address to your browser. The same flow happens with any Internet-enabled application that needs to locate a system on the Internet, including e-mail, FTP, instant messaging clients, etc.
OpenDNS takes a unique approach to DNS queries by expanding the functionality of DNS itself. OpenDNS not only serves as a "phonebook" for the Internet, but also keeps track of known phishing sites. Thus, when you attempt to connect to such a site, OpenDNS will intercept the connection and prevent you from landing there, which in turn protects you by keeping you away from such sites.
Using OpenDNS is simple, easy to manage, and can protect one computer or your entire network, including mobile devices and dedicated game boxes, such as the Nintendo Wii.
To use OpenDNS, you simply configure your Internet-enabled devices to use it instead of the DNS servers provided by your ISP. Since configuring DNS servers into your network settings is usually a one-time operation, you don't have to worry about installing and upgrading software on several different systems.
For any antiphishing tool to be effective, it must, of course, track sites that are known to be used for phishing activity. OpenDNS operates a sister project called PhishTank, which tracks known phishing Web sites, and uses its database to protect you.
PhishTank is an open community project that anyone can contribute to. Participants submit URLs for suspected phishing sites, and other participants can then inspect the sites and vote on whether or not they really are phishing sites. To give you an example of the level of community participation PhishTank has been able to achieve, the project detected and recorded well over 10,000 phishing sites in March 2007 alone!
Since OpenDNS is free to use, you might wonder how the company makes money to keep the operation online. According to the FAQ at the OpenDNS Web site, it makes money by "offering clearly labeled advertisements alongside organic search results."
Basically, when you conduct a search using OpenDNS, you might see ads inserted into the results, not unlike what you see at Google, Yahoo, MSN, or AOL.
If you're worried about your privacy and whether OpenDNS tracks your Internet use, the company says that it doesn't track user information unless the user requests it. You can read more about the service in the FAQ.
If you're interested in trying OpenDNS, go to the Get Started page and click on your operating system type (or click on Router, Mobile, or Gaming, for details on how to configure one of those device types). You can also select DNS Forwarding to configure your own in-house DNS servers to forward all requests to OpenDNS to protect your entire network. You'll find step-by-step configuration instructions, including screenshots for all versions of Windows, OS X, and a few Linux platforms, plus many of the most common routers in use today.
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