ScrubIT
March 1, 2007
I just heard about ScrubIT (hat tip to Andrew Mitry). It is a clever way of blocking porn and filtering other types of bad content. You basically just change your DNS settings to point at their servers and you are all done. I was planning to implement DansGuardian for Crossroads sometime this year, but I think I’ll give this a try first. It took me less than five minutes to set it up on my home DLink router and now all my computers are clean.
Yes, I know, it’s easy to circumvent if you know what you are doing, but I don’t think that will be a problem in the church office. ;)
March 1, 2007 at 6:57 pm
You are probably right about circumvention not being in as issue in the church office, I am a little more concerned because we run a school and have a computer lab. You would be surprised at how savvy some of those kids are! Theoretically the kids are always monitored so this maybe a moot point.
March 2, 2007 at 11:18 am
This is interesting. I am surprised that it is free though.
Back in college I used Integrity Online and some other systems but I had trouble with overfiltering. I could request it to be unblocked but it had to be approved and they were often unwilling to do it.
As a counseling major I had an assignment dealing with teen pregnancy, but I couldn’t search on those terms so I had to request another topic instead. There may be several topics blocked by the filter service that people in ministry would need and you cannot fine tune it.
With a local filter we can change those settings ourselves. I can even drop the filter temporarily for certain sites or individuals if necessary.
March 2, 2007 at 11:45 am
They actually have a beta of a version that allows you to customize your blocklists.
March 2, 2007 at 4:39 pm
That would be very helpful. We will have to wait and see about the cost, speed, and functionality/
March 5, 2007 at 6:17 pm
This is brilliant.
March 6, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Let’s hope internet content circumventing is not an issue at Crossroads! Circumventing that pesky clock that just won’t slow down so we can finish everything…sign me up!
March 16, 2007 at 4:21 pm
ScrubIT is AMAZING!
June 2, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Scrubit doesn’t do a very good job blocking porn sites. Just do a Google search for porn or any other vulgar words and phrases and you’ll be suprised how many sites are not being scrubbed. I reported hundreds of porn sites to Scrubit but they still are not being blocked. I think they have a good idea but they just need to implement it. Otherwise it’s not an effective tool to keep kids or adults from accessing porn.
June 2, 2007 at 8:11 pm
That’s funny, I just tried what you suggest and the only thing I could find that wasn’t block that was questionable was Maxim Magazine, and that’s not really porn. Yes, it is borderline, but one could argue either way on it. So far I’m quite happy with Scrubit.
Are you sure you didn’t use their unscrubed server?
February 11, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Does anyone know if one can circumvent the DNS setting in Linux if you do not have root? I’m helping at a Christian School where we have deployed something like 23 EdUbuntu boxes. All are running dhcpcd so it would be very easy to change the name servers by changing it on the dhcp server. But if scrubit is easily circumvented in Linux then maybe our efforts should go to a more complex solution.
I apologize ahead of time for my ignorance on any subject addressed or alluded to in the above text.
February 22, 2008 at 9:19 am
It would be very difficult to change your DNS server without root access. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it would require more knowledge than your average school kid has. I could envision using a virtualization package (e.g. vmware, qemu, virtualbox) to run one’s own OS on top of the current. Of course most of those systems require a root user to configure networking…
The most likely way to get around such a thing would be to use some sort of internet proxy server. Of course that would likely be able to get through just about anything.
January 3, 2009 at 1:36 am
How does find the DNS settings for Scrubit?
The scrubit.com site just has a title nothing more.
January 3, 2009 at 1:37 am
I meant:
“How does one find the DNS settings?”
January 8, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Scrubit seems to be out of business. Use opendns.com instead.