Open DNS - Issues, Conflicts and Google Redirection

Issues, Conflicts and Google Redirection

While the OpenDNS name resolution service is free, people have complained about how the service handles failed requests. If a domain cannot be found, the service redirects users to a search page with search results and advertising unless the user has paid for an upgraded service. Users can switch this off via the OpenDNS Control Panel, or specify another page to use for missing domains. This behavior is similar to that of many large ISPs who also redirect failed requests to their own servers containing advertising.

In 2007, David Ulevitch explained that in response to Dell installing "Browser Address Error Redirector" software on their PCs, OpenDNS started resolving requests to Google.com. Some of the traffic is handled by OpenDNS typo-correcting service which corrects mistyped addresses and redirects keyword addresses to OpenDNS's search page, while the rest is transparently passed through to the intended recipient.

Also, a user's search request from the address bar of a browser that is configured to use the Google search engine (with a certain parameter configured) may be covertly redirected to a server owned by OpenDNS (which is within the OpenDNS Terms of Service). Users can disable this behavior by logging in to their OpenDNS account and unchecking "OpenDNS proxy" option. Additionally, Mozilla users can fix this problem by installing an extension or by simply changing or removing the navclient sourceid from their keyword search URLs.

This redirection breaks some non-Web applications that rely on getting an NXDOMAIN response for non-existent domains, such as e-mail spam filtering, or VPN access where the private network's nameservers are consulted only when the public ones fail to resolve. Breaking local name resolution can be avoided by configuring the DNS addresses only in the forwarders of the local DNS server or router (the WAN/Internet configuration of a router or other gateway). For other purposes, or when the DNS addresses cannot be configured in a forwarder, domains for which an NXDOMAIN response is expected should be added to the Exceptions for VPN Users section of the OpenDNS Dashboard.