DNS servers - help needed please.

jaydeeuk1

bod1467 wrote: »

If you're using a Homehub then it is next to impossible that you've changed the DNS settings in the hub. Therefore the only place they could have changed is in your PC.

You could also try a CMD prompt (press the Windows key, type in CMD and press Enter) and type in ipconfig /all (and press Enter) ... the DNS server you are using will be shown against the network adaptor.

I was going to say, if you've managed to figure out how to change DNS and remove bt public wifi without disabling it for yourself please do tell

Strider590

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

I'm intrigued by this. There are a few reasons for blocking:

Parental controls (you are not using)
Court order (specific named torrent / newsgroup indexing sites)
IWF "Cleanfeed" system, which BT Internet use (and some other ISPs as well). Was responsible for many UK internet users losing edit abilities on wikipedia for a while a few years ago (but not the ability to read the site) due to the way it operates. If your ISP uses this you cannot disable it.

None of those should affect legitimate sites, though Cleanfeed potentially can for limited periods, as in the wikipedia case. I use an ISP service that runs over BT 21CN for backhaul, so can you inform us of one of these sites that I might see if I'm affected?

Nobody knows who controls the filters used by cleanfeed, I (and many others) strongly suspect it's controlled by (either directly or on the Golf course) large corporate entities, basically because so many people fell for the whole censorship thing, we are looking at an internet where your access to information is hindered and where business competition laws don't seem to apply.

Someone hands over a fat brown envelope and suddenly their online business no longer has any competition.

It seems we're taking a leaf out of Russia's book on this one.

It's all as corrupt as hell and it's going to keep getting worse.

securityguy

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

IWF "Cleanfeed" system, which BT Internet use (and some other ISPs as well). Was responsible for many UK internet users losing edit abilities on wikipedia for a while a few years ago (but not the ability to read the site) due to the way it operates. If your ISP uses this you cannot disable it.

That's actually not quite true. The way BT (and people that re-sell BT services) implement cleanfeed is only bypassable by use of a VPN: they advertise BGP routes to their internal routers for the IP numbers associated with the dodginess, transparently proxy those and and use the transparent proxy to block the particular URL(s). That's what killed Wikipedia: all access to Wikipedia was routed to a proxy in order to filter one URL (an image of the cover of The Scorpions' "Virgin KIller" album) and that meant that all attempts to edit Wikipedia from BT customer lines appeared to come from one IP number, which triggered their sock-puppet controls (and read access to Wikipedia went very slow, as it was all going via the proxy).

However, generating private BGP routing announcements for a list of IP numbers you don't control and not screwing it up is quite hard. A lot of other ISPs just use the IWF Cleanfeed list to modify DNS responses generated by the recursive servers to point to the proxy, which means that if you configure the use of 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 as your DNS you will immediately bypass it.

Remember, the purpose of Cleanfeed is not to block access to (potentially) illegal material. It's just to remove the "whoops, I must have accessed it by accident, I don't know anything about nothing, guv, I was just clicking on some links" defence. All that's necessary is that Cleanfeed stops a straight out of the box installation from accessing stuff on the warning list: if you fiddle with your configuration and as a result accidentally access illegal material, that's your problem. BT's setup is slightly more fiddle-resistant, which is good for you if you're worried about accidentally accessing illegal material, bad for you if you want to access illegal material. Other ISPs still prevent the naive from accidentally accessing it, but substantially lower the threshold of effort involved in bypassing it.

Strider590

securityguy wrote: »

A lot of other ISPs just use the IWF Cleanfeed list to modify DNS responses generated by the recursive servers to point to the proxy, which means that if you configure the use of 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 as your DNS you will immediately bypass it.

No, won't work......

All except TalkTalk (in some instances) and Virgin, use BT hardware, this hardware hijacks port 53 (DNS) traffic and has it's own DNS server pose as whatever DNS server you try to use, there is almost NO way to detect it. It cannot be bypassed without using a VPN or an encrypted data tunnel.