OpenDNS has announced a people-powered Web content filtering platform that will allow users to block more than 30 website categories through an OpenDNS account. The new platform uses the intelligence of the community to perform a security function instead of being limited to the single option of a Web content filtering tool.

Basically, this is a domain tagging system wherein users can tag sites under categories such as gambling, hate, and social networking. Other community members can vote on the accuracy of the tag.

With the help of an inbuilt trust metric, the system can weigh the number of votes, so the more a community member votes and the more accurate their votes, the more weight they will carry. Once a tagged domain crosses a predetermined threshold, it will be added into that category in the OpenDNS system used by companies, schools and other organizations to block access.

The trust mechanism will give more weight to those who have submitted accurate tags more often in the past than those who have submitted fewer tags or have never done so. OpenDNS regards this Web content filtering is far superior to all other filtering tools for three main reasons: it is more comprehensive, faster and free to use.

The company argues that the system has tens of thousands of people submitting and verifying the accuracy of Web sites' inclusion in categories. This is in stark contrast to a mere handful of people employed for this job by security companies offering Web content filtering.