
A new reason to love OpenDNS: no more ads (2014) - arunc
https://www.opendns.com/no-more-ads/
======
davidu
Founder of OpenDNS here.

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...](https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-
content?articleId=1667697)

~~~
newscracker
I had to look at the page source to find that there was a meta tag for
description stating "As of June 6, 2014, OpenDNS no longer shows ads to
users." Unfortunately, there is no indication anywhere on the visible page
about the year.

 _Mods, please add 2014 to the title of this post._

------
chrismorgan
Three years ago I was at a place in India for a couple of months where OpenDNS
was _forced_ : the ISP literally intercepted all DNS queries and fed them
through OpenDNS. The absence of NXDOMAIN was _really_ annoying. It easily
convinced me that I wouldn’t use OpenDNS by choice while they did that.

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.

~~~
wccrawford
Yes, it was absolutely horrible and to this day I don't consider using it
because of how horrible it was back then.

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practice 2 years ago, and that this news is just out of date.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.

~~~
corobo
So for you companies can never repent for their sins? I'd be interested in
seeing the list of services you do use - I don't know many active companies
that haven't had a bad idea somewhere down the line.

------
justinlardinois
> The OpenDNS Guide was, until recently, a helpful tool. If the website you
> wanted to visit wasn’t loading, we took you to search results instead of an
> error page.

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.

~~~
amelius
Well, nowadays in Chrome and probably some other browsers, Google is
effectively doing that, i.e., showing suggestions when you make a typo in the
address bar while typing.

~~~
justinlardinois
Doing it at the browser level is a lot more reasonable than at the DNS level.

~~~
kijin
Back when OpenDNS started doing it, most browsers couldn't do it.

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.

------
nachtigall
Using the free OpenDNS FamilyShield for years now:
[https://support.opendns.com/entries/46060260-FamilyShield-
Ro...](https://support.opendns.com/entries/46060260-FamilyShield-Router-
Configuration-Instructions). Best solution I've found to get some parental
blocking of p0rn or similar sites on Ubuntu/Linux.

------
oijawef
this shows off really well one of my pet peeves: news/blog pages that don't
include the date anywhere

this change is over two years old :|

~~~
philsnow
Apparently bloggers consider this a feature, because they want the content
that they are putting to be considered "evergreen", and seeing [2008] on a
blog post makes a lot of people bounce right off and discount the whole thing.
Well, that's the idea, anyway.

~~~
notfoss
I am not sure why you were downvoted, but that is exactly the reason why many
blog posts don't display the post date.

------
_jomo
While this is old news and probably well-intenioned, I don't like anything
being blocked out of my control. uBlock works great and shows me what's
blocked.

------
codezero
This seems a reasonable thread to ask this: I found a weird dns server,
conspiracy theory level. If you grok dns and would indulge me, send me an
email :)

------
na85
And here I was thinking OpenDNS was taking a brave, pioneering step: I thought
this was going to be an announcement that they'd be blocking all ad networks
at their end.

A web without ads. Too good to be true.

~~~
janimo
That would also be a web without net neutrality.

~~~
mholt
Not really -- using OpenDNS is your choice, not an infrastructure/policy
requirement as if they were your ISP.

~~~
meowface
Where do you draw the line though?

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.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> 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.)

~~~
petercooper
_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'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".

~~~
JoshTriplett
If a DNS provider does something they _can 't_ justify in the name of
providing a better service, that makes it easier to convince people to use a
different service.

