It is a concern for parents around the globe: how to keep one’s children safe online. Particularly through search engines, vulnerable children of any age can find themselves exposed to vulgar and crude content, even from seemingly innocuous requests. As such, especially when technical awareness and skill is at a universal low, easy-to-use effective tools to help towards this end are highly useful, even if they are often rare.
Aware of this, Microsoft has made Bing the first to adopt the new web safety standard known as ‘safe preference’. Websites and search engines that have adopted this standard only show content considered to be safe when users browsers have communicated the user’s safety preference to them.
With Bing, users have to turn on Windows Family Safety for their child’s account. Following this, participating browsers will recognize the change made, and as such Bing will only display non-Adult content to the end user. Currently, the safe preference option is only supported by Internet Explorer (v10+) and Firefox. It is hoped that as more browsers and websites begin to adopt the standard, not only will the web become a little more family friendly, but a little more inclusive in its production of content.
Will this make a difference to the way you protect your children online? Let us know in the comments below.
