How To Set Up Bing SafeSearch For Family Friendly Browsing

How to Set Up Bing SafeSearch for Family Friendly Browsing

In an increasingly digital world, ensuring the online safety of children is a paramount concern for parents and guardians. One effective way to filter out inappropriate content from search results is by enabling Bing SafeSearch. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up Bing SafeSearch to create a family-friendly browsing environment.

Enabling SafeSearch on Bing

To start, you need to adjust the SafeSearch settings directly on the Bing website. Here’s how you can do it:

Open the Bing homepage and click on the gear icon at the top right corner of the page. This will take you to the Settings page.
Scroll down to the “SafeSearch” section.
Select either “Moderate” or “Strict” from the drop-down menu. For younger children, it is recommended to choose the “Strict” option, which filters out explicit images and videos, as well as other harmful or offensive content[3][4][5].

Saving Your Settings

Once you have selected your preferred SafeSearch level, click “Save” to apply the changes. This ensures that all future searches conducted on Bing will be filtered according to your chosen settings.

Using Microsoft Family Safety

For a more comprehensive approach, you can use Microsoft Family Safety to manage and enforce SafeSearch across all devices linked to a child's Microsoft account.

Sign in to your Microsoft account and select “Family Safety” from the menu on the left.
Find your family member and select “Go to overview.”
Navigate to the “Content filters” section.
Turn on the “Filter inappropriate websites and searches” toggle. This will block mature websites and filter searches in the Bing search engine[2].

Blocking Specific Sites

Within Microsoft Family Safety, you can also block or allow specific websites to further customize the browsing experience.

Under the “Content filters” section, you can add or select sites to block or allow by entering their URLs under “Blocked Sites” or “Allowed sites.”
You can also limit access to only allowed websites by turning on the “Only use allowed websites” toggle[2].

Network-Level Configuration

For an even more robust solution, you can configure Bing SafeSearch at the network level to ensure that all devices connected to your network use SafeSearch.

You can re-map Bing’s IP address to the CNAME strict.bing.com by editing the /etc/hosts file on your Mac or Linux, or the \WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file on Windows. Add the following lines to the file:
```
204.79.197.220 www.bing.com bing.com
204.79.197.220 www2.bing.com
204.79.197.220 www3.bing.com
```
Alternatively, you can configure this setting at your router level by logging into your router, finding the DNS and Domain mapping option, and mapping the IP address 204.79.197.220 to www.bing.com and bing.com[5].

Ensuring Compliance Across Devices

To ensure that SafeSearch is enforced across all devices, make sure that family members are using the Microsoft Edge browser while signed into their Microsoft accounts. Microsoft Family Safety web and search filters only work with the Microsoft Edge browser, so it is crucial to use this browser for effective filtering[2].

By following these steps, you can effectively set up Bing SafeSearch to provide a safer and more family-friendly browsing environment for your children. This combination of settings and tools helps in filtering out inappropriate content, protecting your children from accidental or intentional exposure to harmful online material.