I have a cable modem based internet access at home. The wireless router connected to the cable modem serves close to dozen different devices on the home network, which is typical these days for most homes. So, I was looking for an elegant way to make sure content delivered to these home devices are clean.
You can go around installing PC based software for each PC to block hate, pornographic, drug related sites. But then you need to make sure the licenses and individual PC configurations are updated regularly. I don't like loading a lot of bloatware on individual computers. In addition there are no such options for say a gaming console (Nintendo Wii) connecting to internet via your home network.
Next option is to setup filters on the gateway router at home. But home routers do not provide enough sophistication to allow/block all you need.
So, decided to use OpenDNS service for now. To use it, you go to opendns.com and register yourself. Then change the DNS server address your home router uses to look up IP address for various websites to the ones provided by OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220). There are instructions on the site for various routers as to how their DNS entries should be updated. Once you set this up, whenever you access any website, OpenDNS will provide the IP address for all the allowed websites and alternately display a message saying "Access to this site is not allowed from your network" for all the offensive sites. Check out http://www.opendns.com/home for more details.
1. They seem reputable with millions of clients with various media vouching for them.
2. By default they don't track what sites computers in your network access. So, no major privacy concern. But if you want you can turn on logging and see what sites are being accessed from your home network.
3. You can delete the logs whenever you like if logging is enabled.
4. Basic service is free for homes.
5. When you login to their site, you can customize what sites need to be blocked. For example, you can choose to block any one of or all of porn sites, gambling sites, hate speech sites, drug sites, even video streaming sites (like YouTube), social networking sites (like Facebook), shopping sites, phishing/malware sites, etc. You can login and change the settings (for example disable all controls) whenever you like.
I am sure there are other similar services. But this one seems decent. Check it out and let me know if you find it useful.
-sundar.
