Starting on September 1st, 2011, GFI is going to drop their free ClearCloud DNS service, which saves countless people from surfing to web sites known to be infected or otherwise listed as a bad destination.  To me, this is an incredibly bad, self serving decision considering the number of infected web sites increases daily and has been estimated to number no less than 100,000 on any given day. 

To me, this lack of concern for public safety shows that GFI’s policy is, as always ”me first!”.  In true GFI fashion,  they somehow try to  rationalize their decision by saying mostcustomers do not want to receive this very valuable free service, but instead would prefer to purchase GFI’s (originally SunBelt Software’s) Vipre Premium product for their web filtering.

Well, it’s their product and we just need a “work-around”, so here are my suggestions:

1) Web of Trust (WOT) provides about the same function but in a different way. Go to [1] http://www.mywot.com and download their plug-in(s) or your web browser(s).

2) Change your DNS server settings to OpenDNS:   208.67.220.220 and 208.67.222.222

These two changes will give you the same protection without relying on the commercial sector.

Below is the message that is displayed when you enter a non-existent website or an infected website while using ClearCloud DNS:

“Effective September 1, 2011, GFI’s ClearCloud DNS service will be discontinued and no longer available for consumer use. While we have many loyal ClearCloud DNS users, we have found that most customers prefer the more robust web filtering solution available as a feature in our [2] VIPRE Premiumproduct. We would like to thank all of the beta testers for their valuable feedback throughout this last 12 month evaluation period. To discontinue using the ClearCloud DNS service, you will need to reconfigure your network connection. If this is not done prior to September 1, 2011, your Internet connectivity will be interrupted. Learn how to remove ClearCloud DNS from your computer by [3] clicking here.”