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Domain blocking: MyWOT

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    • CommentAuthordiffuser87
    • CommentTimeApr 14th 2009
     permalink
    Hello, I have not had this issue up until today, but OpenDNS appears to be blocking mywot.com with this message:

    Site blocked. www.mywot.com is not allowed on this network.
    This site was categorized as:

    Adware


    Any help on this issue? Thank you for making such a great DNS service though, it is really wonderful and it has a permanent place in my router settings.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeApr 14th 2009
     permalink
    Go to https://www.opendns.com/dashboard/settings/ and check if you have category "Adware" blocked. Either add mywot.com to your "Never block" list, or uncheck category "Adware".
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009 edited
     permalink
    The decision to add mywot.com to the adware category must have happened within the last couple of hours as I was on that site earlier and have the adware category enabled.

    I've now added mywot.com to the whitelist as I don't believe it to be adware, and voted as such a while ago.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009 edited
     permalink
    Yes, I don't think it being adware either.
    I have flagged it for review at http://domain.opendns.com/mywot.com
    but this is normally with minor success. :sad:
    And I have added it to my whitelist too.
    Surprising: http://forums.opendns.com/search.php?PostBackAction=Search&Keywords=WOT&Type=Comments&btnSubmit=Search
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009
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    I've also flagged it for review.
    • CommentAuthormlgolden
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009
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    It appears a troll using the name gerry.odea is fouling the OpenDNS database.
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009 edited
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    @mlgolden: gerry.odea will have been the first person to tag it as adware, but the number of 'yes' votes by the rest of the community will have caused the domain to be added to the adware category.
    • CommentAuthorahooton
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009
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    Definitley not adware - it's a free system for ranking websites in various categories as being trustworthy or not - much like SiteAdvisor, similar to the blocking functionality of OpenDNS.
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009 edited
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    According to Sami at mywot.com (http://www.mywot.com/en/forum/3107-opendns), gerry.odea is associated with Advanced Search Bar (advancedsearchbar.com) and has some grudges against WOT. Apparently, he's been posting unfavourable reviews about WOT in various places.

    On the subject of SiteAdvisor and the similarity to WOT, that has been correctly tagged as Software/Technology (http://domain.opendns.com/siteadvisor.com). This is what one would expect Web of Trust to be eventually tagged as.
    • CommentAuthordiffuser87
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009
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    Well thanks guys, I'm glad it was not just me seeing this. I appreciate the help.
    • CommentAuthortriggerg
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009
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    Looks like the moderators removed the "Adware" tag. Good work guys. :smile:
    I hope the other tags kindly suggested by "gerry.odea" will be rejected.
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeApr 15th 2009 edited
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    Yes, it looks like commonsense has prevailed.

    Thank you to whoever was involved. :bigsmile:
    • CommentAuthorphantazm
    • CommentTimeApr 16th 2009
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    Tagging mywot.com as "adware" is totally absurd and pure nonsens;
    I only wonder why this "gerry.odea" didn't tag openDNS similar..?
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeApr 16th 2009
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    ...because OpenDNS cannot be tagged or voted on or filtered. :wink:
    http://domain.opendns.com/opendns.com
    http://www.opendns.com/support/article/139
    • CommentAuthorrblee
    • CommentTimeApr 16th 2009
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    This "gerry.odea" chap does highlight a weakness with this system - Any idiot with a grudge and a handful of accounts can use it to pursue their petty vendettas.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeApr 16th 2009
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    ...but it does not remain undiscovered for a long time, as you can see.
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeApr 16th 2009 edited
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    It's not just Gerry though is it? He is a particular case I admit, but we have had this discussion before about trying to get people to tag domains responsibly (http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=3303)

    Whilst we have the community to vote for or against such tagging suggestions, some are a little bit unbelievable and seem out of place given the context of the domains they've been placed in. I know that in time, the more people vote 'no', those such tags will get rejected, but that didn't happen here. More people voted 'yes' to adware. Who's to say that a genuine site might get tagged as pornography because more people vote 'yes' to that?

    It just creates more work for the moderators.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeApr 16th 2009
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    "More people voted 'yes' to adware."
    Not sure about this. "Gerry" may have had many accounts set up here...
    And a mod having seen enough votes finally approved it...
    Maybe "Gerry" (one if his accounts) is/was such a mod???

    "It just creates more work for the moderators."
    Hmm, not if "Gerry" is a mod...
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeApr 16th 2009
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    ยป "Hmm, not if "Gerry" is a mod..."

    If he was a moderator, he should have a Domain Tagging Moderator icon next to his name, and he doesn't have such an icon.

    In fact, he has only submitted 35 domains and voted 38 times. (http://www.opendns.com/community/user/608872) I do take your point that he may have more than one account, but that's something only the OpenDNS team can verify and possibly do something about.
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2009
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    Attention domain tagging moderators:

    Just found some more tags submitted by gerry.odea at http://domain.opendns.com/hosts-file.net

    This is the website for the hpHosts file (http://hosts-file.net).

    Odea's tags are nonsense - they need to be removed.
    Thankful People: rotblitz, Red Prince, maintenance, petsku
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2009 edited
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    Yes, this site is so clean, cleaner than Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. They even do not display advertisements, but just ask for a donation...
    I have voted all with "no", not only gerry.odea's categories, with the exception of "Software/Technology" and "Research/Reference", which seem to be the only appropriate ones.
    Why don't OpenDNS ban this gerry.odea? Or at least contact him to talk a few honest words? This guy is really sick!

    Edit: Here is another one where gerry.odea is involved:
    http://domain.opendns.com/billoreilly.com
    He didn't submit it, but voted, and look at the categories!

    But there are also other strange submitters, look here for an example:
    http://domain.opendns.com/ultraindia.com
    The guy simply submitted hundreds of domains starting with "ultra" and "ult" and tagged them as p0rn. How clever! This is how he submitted 202097 domains and earned 4,793,710 points for that... :angry:
    Strange that ultraedit.com is not under them...

    Wonder why there are 411,125 domains undecided under p0rn0graphy?
    I have quick-checked a series of some thirty subsequent domains, and maybe three were really p0rn, the rest wasn't at all. Many of them are parked domains with stupid ads.
    Thankful People: maintenance
    • CommentAuthorgerry.odea
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2009
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    Just goes to show you that inept users should not be rating sites and in addition OpenDNS should not be displaying their search result ads on those blocked sites. It's in their financial interest that a domain be blocked because it drives revenue to the yahoo search page that they make revenue from. MyWot is useless as well because they do the same thing, except they don't show ads/search results....yet. Who reviewed MyWot.com ay OpenDNS? Why was it approved? This system is good but very flawed. What if your competitor targeted you and labeled your site as spyware/porn/etc. You would never know about it and OpenDNS would be getting your traffic redirected to them, which must be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Are site owners notified? Is there anyway for a site owner to be notified? :bigsmile:
  23.  permalink
    Oh, well played.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2009 edited
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    @gerry.odea
    "It's in their financial interest that a domain be blocked because it drives revenue..."
    So, the purpose of your inappropriate taggings is to support OpenDNS? :confused:
    Hmm, this could be a point of view, but inacceptable. :shocked:
    • CommentAuthorgerry.odea
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2009
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    @rotblitz
    no, but I guess you could find it complicated.
  26.  permalink
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2009 edited
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    @gerry.odea
    Any reason why you tagged whitehouse.gov as Adware, Hate/Discrimination and Nudity?

    Edit: "Is there anyway for a site owner to be notified?"
    Sure, everybody can always go to http://www.opendns.com/support/checker/ to check the own or any other site and even vote it up or down! Pretty fair!
    And no, there is no automatic notification. Imagine, a notification went out to a site owner each time a user selected his site's category for blocking! Because this had to be done, and no site owner would want this. OpenDNS does not block anything at all. Being in a category doesn't mean anything (as long as not sickies like you make bad, useless and malicious categorizations). It is each OpenDNS user's individual decision to block a category of his/her choice from his/her network. Think about that!

    Also, if I ever found out you are a website owner, I will take appropriate measures to pay you all back, believe me. There are much opportunities for a guy like me. And these far exceed the possibilities of domain tagging at OpenDNS...

    Another edit: Ah, sure, there is a way to get notified automatically! There are several free services out notifying you of pages changes of your choice. You just need to subscribe to such a service with the page http://domain.opendns.com/example.com
    That's it!
  28.  permalink
    Funny that Opendns.com can not be voted on anymore, yet has tons of names under the users who voted for list..
    • CommentAuthordiacon
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2009
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    He's bitter and wants this type of system to fail. By putting in bad tags, he is effectively ruining OpenDNS's category content filtering. I'll agree that it isn't the best system to block sites, however it works fairly well when asshats don't purposely try to screw it up.
    Thankful People: guilden_nl, rotblitz, petsku
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeMay 3rd 2009
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    gerry.odea has re-tagged mywot.com as adware after it was removed by moderators: http://domain.opendns.com/www.mywot.com

    The Research/Reference tag needs to be removed from the top of the page as it was rejected.
  31.  permalink
    Vote it down, that way, it probably cannot be re-added.
    • CommentAuthortonor
    • CommentTimeMay 4th 2009
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    Of course, I have voted no as I did last time.
  33.  permalink
    he should be banned from adding new Domain tags.. although I'm guessing they might only have to option to ban him outright or not ban at all..
    Thankful People: guilden_nl
  34.  permalink
    Except, when you ban a troll, he just gets a new identity. So it is better to keep him and watch him carefully.
    Thankful People: rotblitz
  35.  permalink
    Banning his IP would work well assuming he is not on a dynamic account....it would at least slow him down... Community ratings are great until of course someone wants to ruin it for everyone else. Thanks for the support guys!
    •  
      CommentAuthormmirenzi
    • CommentTimeMay 6th 2009 edited
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    Administrator
    We'll be dealing with the inappropriate tags post haste folks - not to worry. (and sorry for the inconvenience)
    Thankful People: guilden_nl, rotblitz, Red Prince, maintenance
  37.  permalink
    gerry.odea, Find a rock to crawl back under.
  38.  permalink
    Take a look at the tags for Amazon.com and Dell.com, a mod named Daddy O tagged Amazon as Adware and a mod named M Frank tagged Dell.com as Adware. DMOZ.org is tagged as adware by a mod named M Frank, this mod lists Infospace.com as ADWARE/NUDITY. These are just some big sites I checked. There are probably thousands more that are incorrectly tagged. Once a number of users click on those links those sites will be blocked.

    I don't have any Moderator accounts on OPENDNS, Marc Mirenzi (mmirenzi) can verify that for you. Marc also threatened "request that you refrain from inappropriately tagging domains, lest we have to simply block you from being able to do so at all." yet there are Moderators listing legit sites as Adware, like I listed above. If a website owner complains about their site being tagged incorrectly all OPENDNS does is REJECT those listing for that particular website when they should be removing all of the tags that user submitted because you can no longer trust their accurancy. Also their is nothing to stop competitors from targeting your site.


    Read this....
    http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=1534&page=1#Item_6

    OPENDNS needs to fix this. Website owners should not be at the mercy of OPENDNS and have to check with OPENDNS to see if their websites are tagged incorrectly. That is nonsense! Who died and left them in charge of the Internet? They need to have a notification system for the website owner so that they can dispute the tag associated with their website.

    OPENDNS seems more concerned with redirecting/stealing the traffic intented for the blocked website then correcting this flaw in their system. Otherwise it's a great product.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeMay 8th 2009
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    Good approaches!

    "Take a look at the tags..."
    Sh.. happens, as you US Americans say. No reason to also tag incorrectly. This weakness does not need to be proved, it is apparent.

    "OPENDNS needs to fix this."
    The category tagging and filtering system needs to be improved somehow, that's clear. And I'm pretty sure they are working on it.

    "OPENDNS seems more concerned with redirecting/stealing the traffic intented for the blocked website..."
    I did not get this impression. They still get far enough ads out with only legit tagging and blocking. And they have a very good reputation to lose. As you say, "it's a great product". I would even say one of the greatest internet related products recently. Let's all support them in making this even better. We all will benefit from doing so.
  40.  permalink
    as rotblitz stated in his post above:

    "Also, if I ever found out you are a website owner, I will take appropriate measures to pay you all back, believe me. There are much opportunities for a guy like me. And these far exceed the possibilities of domain tagging at OpenDNS..."

    This is why you can't allow average users to tag websites, they could have an axe to grind or they could be just plain stupid and should not be allowed to review websites, especially if that website ends up being blocked from millions of users and all of that traffic being redirected/stolen by OPENDNS/YAHOO!
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeMay 8th 2009
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    "There are much opportunities..."
    Same as with tagging: the art is to use this responsibly, as much as can.
    You have not shown responsibility and care with your tagging behavior, but have tried to prove what was already pretty clear, leaving a lot of angry and unhappy people.

    "you can't allow average users to tag websites"
    Don't preach elitist thinking. At the end everybody is an "average user" in some way, beside narrow-minded extremists, who tag sites intentionally incorrect, because the sites may be "sinful" or "otherwise objectionable", or they just try proving that a system may be weak or vulnerable...
  42.  permalink
    Another question for you rotblitz? Why are you tagging zocdoc.com as Adware?
    • CommentAuthorsbcnetops
    • CommentTimeMay 8th 2009
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    I think we are all arguing the same thing from different ends of an eight sided fence here. gerry took what has been discussed by the more enlightened in these forums to the extreme and did exactly what we said would happen with the domain tagging system. rotblitz has commented numerous times in many threads regarding the ridiculous tagging taking place. gerry did it and caused the system to do exactly what we feared it would be used for.

    The tag voting system is bad, bad, bad. A small like minded group can hijack the system and cause a lot of problems. It has to be impartial and remain neutral if not leaning towards liberal. Having freaked out mom's, dad's, and unemployed conservative nut jobs with nothing to do but sit and tag sites all day is not impartial or neutral. (And for clarification, I am a conservative, except I know when to turn it off, usually, for the most part)

    It will be interesting to see OpenDNS's solution. I saw the flaws in the tagging system the first day I signed up for OpenDNS. That was about 3 weeks ago. It sure didn't take long for the prophecy to be fulfilled. So gerry, thank you for being an obnoxious, in your face, catalyst for change. You had the guts to come here and add your comments on your actions. I think that is worth something.

    Don't ban gerry. Fix the broken system for the future gerrys that are sure to follow.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeMay 8th 2009 edited
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    @gerry.odea
    I didn't tag it as Adware, this tag was already there. But I voted for it. Why?
    When I visited that site, I became aware of "applications which display advertisements without user's knowledge or choice". That's the definition.

    However, I tagged it as Ecommerce/Shopping, Health, Research/Reference and Adult Themes. Do you want to know my reasons for any of those?
  45.  permalink
    You did tage it as Adware.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeMay 8th 2009
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    There seems to be an evidence, yes.
    http://www.opendns.com/community/user/224333
    But that's not true. The spam thread from zocdoc.com was removed by the mods.
    Another system bug: http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=3523
  47.  permalink
    Why Adult Themes? It's a f..king doctor referral service for NYC. This proves my point. End users should not be reviewing websites.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeMay 8th 2009
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    Because every site not being explicitly suitable or at least of some use for children or minors should be tagged as Adult Themes. The contrary would be Child or Teen Themes. I'm missing the latter, as long as the first exists. Why would minors look after doctors in NYC?

    Yes, almost all sites would fall unter this category. I did not say that I am a friend of the current category architecture and design. I just said let's make the best of it, as long as nothing else is there.
  49.  permalink
    Elitist snobs should not be the 1's reviewing websites either... So stop it Gerry...it does not prove your point..and also the domains tagged list is flawed.. sometimes it lists the last person to vote yes or no on a tag..added by is usually more accurate to a vote for a tag.. and you have added many weird tags to sites
    Thankful People: rotblitz
    • CommentAuthorsbcnetops
    • CommentTimeMay 8th 2009
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    This issue is not going to get solved here. But it is also not going to go away regardless of what Gerry does. So the discussion is important. Please stop posting angry and calling names. It is pointless. Take a step back, and count to 10 before pressing "Add your comments".

    This is exactly why the vote system is busted. People are loosing, or never had to begin with, any objectivity. There is too much emotion. There is too much shock factor. There is too much bias.
    Thankful People: rotblitz

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