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Thread: Would a whitelist work for domains?

  1. #1
    HEXUS.social member Allen's Avatar
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    Would a whitelist work for domains?

    I thought of this myself, quite a while ago, but I didn't have any clues where to air my ideas, but it seems that others are now maybe thinking the same.

    It's time to presume the web is guilty • The Register

    This is pretty much spot on to my thoughts. When I started working in IT I worked on server that had GFI installed, this had a blacklist/whitelist for emails which was great, and I wondered would this work with websites on a global, or even UK, level?

    Yes, it's policing the internet, but do you really think this is such a bad idea in this day and age? How many home users (or even work users) really know how to keep a PC safe? Not many, I'm sure. The biggest problems we came up against from business and retail customers was virus and adware/spyware.

    Common origins of these problems are emails and social networking sites, and I saw the other day that Facebook has increased to over 500 millions users, which I'm sure a huge portion of have got viruses from clicking on the multitude of stupid links saying "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS, CLICK HERE TO SEE THIS PICTURE" etc. If policing was in operation then lots and lots of people would not fall victim (so easily) to identity theft and fraud etc.

    Can anything be done about this increasing threat? Would policing the internet work? If not, how would you recommend trying to fix this problem?

    I guess lots of people will be against taking the freedom away from the internet, which to an extent I agree with. However, IF it was possible to create a whitelist that somehow your ISP had access to and you tried going to a site not on the whitelist, you should still be able to go to the site once you have passed a warning or something, which could help to deter users from going to "dodgy" sites and getting infected PC's.

    I dunno, just saw this article on the reg and it brought back my ideas which I thought I'd share and see what ohers think about it.

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    Mostly Me Lucio's Avatar
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    Re: Would a whitelist work for domains?

    The big question with a whitelist is how to create it without stiffiling corporate creativity. After all, one of the joys of the web is that even the smallest company can establish a basic presence without too much time, effort or hassle.

    Secondly, if a whitelist in place, what's to stop a bait and switch? Get a site white listed with perfectly acceptable content, and then switch it with their dodgy one and claim they were hacked.

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    This is bunny and friends. He is fed up waiting for everyone to help him out, and decided to help himself instead!

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    Senior Member oolon's Avatar
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    Re: Would a whitelist work for domains?

    Personally I think the answer is DNSSEC, all certificates must be signed by an approved CA who responsibility is that the domain in not a spammer. CAs will revoke certificates for domains which spam. Email only when it comes from an approved mail server for that domain will it be accepted. Email servers will have certificates which must be signed by the domain for any domain they carry.

    SIMPLEZ.

    Problem is alot of people will have to update there setups... to which I say ... tuff if you don't like it your a spammer or spammer helper.
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    PHP Geek Flash477's Avatar
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    Re: Would a whitelist work for domains?

    Whitelists are always a last ditch attempt in my books, as if it was behaving properly it would pass being blocked and/or blacklisted. Blacklists are always a better way of doing things, and to a degree, although I am by no means a fan of IE, they have started to implement those with their phishing filters.

    Part of the problem is that your average internet user has absolutlely no ideo of the dangers and will quite happily click on links, or turn off important things like windows / antivirus updates because it was either annoying them, or they clicked the wrong button. Short of having the equivalent of an internet driving test this is always going to be the main problem.

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