Daily Links for Wednesday, January 27, 2010 – Open Source Web Filtering Edition

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Bob Sutor

Open Source

DansGuardian – True Web Content Filtering for All

DansGuardian is an award winning Open Source web content filter which currently runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX, and Solaris. It filters the actual content of pages based on many methods including phrase matching, PICS filtering and URL filtering. It does not purely filter based on a banned list of sites like lesser totally commercial filters.

OpenDNS

OpenDNS makes networks in homes, schools and businesses safer, faster, smarter and more reliable through Web content filtering and navigation services.

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2 Responses to Daily Links for Wednesday, January 27, 2010 – Open Source Web Filtering Edition

  1. Felix says:
    January 27, 2010 at 6:26 pm

    I have used both, but am not an expert:

    DansGuardian: requires a certain amount of knowledge to install. Works once switched on. However I found configuration a problem. ie. it would block the UK National Lottery site – my response switch off DG. I am not aware of any tools for easy configuration, which means instead that you have to edit the config files by hand.

    OpenDns: easy to configure. Nice web interface. Lots of categories to choose from including basic malware sites, porn, etc. Best to set it up on your broadband router so that all pc’s on your network are covered.
    However, reasonably easy to by pass on Windows – just change the DNS settings. Therefore child is likely to outsmart parent!
    Requires registered IP address to be updated when router is restarted, this needs DynDNS app on computer.

    DansGuardian is probably better at stopping smut since it analyses web pages whereas OpenDNS is based on blacklists.

  2. Don Watkins says:
    January 27, 2010 at 8:30 pm

    Yes, I have personal experience with DansGuardian and it was quite good. I have not used it in almost five years. SmoothGuardian is a commercial product based on DansGuardian. My first internet filter for our school system was based on Squid, SquidGuard and Dansguardian. It was my introduction to production Linux servers. A happy day for me, in retrospect. I’ve thought of returning to it as it’s almost as effective as our current product 8E6 and if run in conjunction with a transparent proxy it is very effective and would keep us easily in compliance with CIPA.