My users recently demonstrated to me that one of the most popular industry-standard web sites used by the Aviation community has been blocked as being flagged as AdWare. This apparently happened before we were OpenDNS members. The site in question is airnav.com.

I flagged it for review, but this brings up a very important question. Is there any kind of official review of sites before they are tagged as distributing AdWare? Voting simply is not enough, as the few people who voted on the site obviously did not read the definition of "AdWare" as provided by OpenDNS. YES, this site does operate as a potential source of advertising for the aviation community, on a business-to-business level (NOT unsolicited). But, NO, this site absolutely does not install software on your PC without your knowledge. In fact, this site is highly recommended by many industry partners, including the FAA, airport operators, Microsoft (on their flight simulator "for more information" pages, and trade organizations such as the NBAA, ATA, and AOPA.

Incorrectly listing sites such as this under "AdWare" completely negates the advantages of OpenDNS for many customers, as they use OpenDNS to block REAL AdWare sites and are forced to disable that category of blocking due to the inaccuracies of the block database.

Also, given the widespread DNS Cache Poisoning attacks that are presently occuring, RESEARCH must be done to confirm that the AdWare/SpyWare/Virus that just infected a computer REALLY came from the site that it appears to have come from. In the South Florida area, with BellSouth as the DNS server, I have personally witnessed 6 DNS Cache Poisoning attacks in the last week, that caused viruses to be seemingly installed via completely legitimate web sites.

Also, is there a way that a web site operator who gets listed in a category can request removal, like the various AntiSPAM databases provide for? Getting listed in an incorrect negative category on systems such as this can cause major negative impacts on a site's business.

In short, OpenDNS is a good idea, but in my opinion, a lot needs to be done to tweak the process by which sites are categorized, in order to make it a reliable source of DNS services for businesses.

Thank you for your assistance, Miked. I will post if my clients notice any other inappropriately-blocked business-related sites.

When a site is listed as Ad-Ware, is this site submitted as the top level domain only, or during submitting, can someone actually point to a forum page or corrupted file that is the suspect for the ad-ware?

I'm new to OpenDNS, but I'm willing to participate and have some experience managing and scoring sites under my day job. I take site categories very seriously and can see where careless scoring can do more harm than good.

This is a very good example for confusing the Adware and the Advertising tag. Unfortunately some people tag practically every business website as Adware, which shows the confusion of these two tags.

I agree, and I think it's even worse. It seems some people tag websites just for gettings points, massive tagging, low quality. I'm sure they never checked the websites they have submitted. Others will doublecheck? Not good thinking.

Examples: budsmoker.com was tagged drugs, but it's porn.
mountedshooting.com was tagged weapons, but its computer hardware.

This clearly demonstrates that massive tagging of websites doesn't work. And some poor buggers out there are the victims. Why is a German butcher's website Malware plus anonymizer? Why is a dance school Malware? It seems all Russian websites end up tagged Malware, pretty much the same with German websites. Don't tag when you don't understand what's the website about, when you can't speak the language, don't tag without having visited the site. I know, this would slow the process down, but at this stage quality is poor.

Unfortunately St Bernard's don't do better. Just an example: palmers.at, Austria's biggest clothes company, is tagged porn, but it's just their lingerie online shop. Flagging for review remains without response.

I must say, I get a bit disappointed about the whole idea. Maybe you should not get points any more for submitting websites, that might help a bit.