About Managed Blacklists

When you create a policy based on blacklists, the lists and options presented are designed to improve your Internet usage experience without blacklisting domains that create significant inconveniences. In other words, starting out with all managed blacklists and features enabled, rarely creates any friction at all. It simply allows end-users to immediately have a better experience.

  • Better Safe than Sorry – domains that are considered high-risk but not necessarily all bad. For example, .om domains are covered in this list since very few are actually used, but the TLD has been used a lot for similarly-spelled domains. For example, google.om and google.com look very similar, but one is high-risk and the other isn’t.

  • Block Behavioural Profiling – domains that are used as trackers but aren’t necessary for the essential functions of most websites. Flurry.com is an example of a domain in this list.

  • Block Content Marketers – services that are used to embed additional content on a site, often labelled as “You may also be interested in…”. Content marketers are also often referred to as “web spam”. An example of a domain in this list is: taboola.com

  • Block Third Party Advertisers – domains that are used specifically for advertising purposes. This since malware is often embedded in ads, this option reduces risks of malware being installed. An example of a domain in this list is doubleclick.net

  • Make Streaming and Downloads fast – directs Content Delivery Network domains to your ISP for name resolution. The advantage of this is that Content Delivery Networks are better able to bring their content closest to you. For example, any Akamai.net (a large CDN provider) query should go to your ISP and not to Google DNS or OpenDNS. This feature is dependent on your gateway having ISP-assigned DNS servers on its WAN settings.

The domains contained in the lists above are updated with both manual and automated processes. When a new blacklisted domain is added, it takes 1-2 minutes to be distributed to your subscribed site.