What Is Safe Search

Why is Safe Search important for online safety?

You’re likely to find Safe Search important if you want to avoid stumbling across explicit content and malicious websites that could harm your device when you’re browsing the web.

Although Safe Search isn’t a substitute for proper content blockers, parental controls, and spyware removal tools, it’s an additional layer of protection that many internet users, particularly those who have kids, use to make the online world a little safer.

How does Safe Search work?

Safe Search takes advantage of sophisticated algorithms and machine learning tools to identify and filter out explicit online content.

The most obvious advantage of Safe Search is its ability to block adult images and videos from appearing in search results. However, it also stops other content that many users might consider inappropriate, such as gore and graphic violence. Thus, it’s not a substitute for parental control features and cybersecurity tools.

What is Safe Search blurring?

Safe Search blurring is a feature that some search engines offer to hide explicit content. If you don’t want to encounter these images and videos inadvertently but don’t want to stop them from appearing in your search results entirely, Safe Search blurring gives you that option.

Unfortunately, not all search engines offer the blurring feature. You’ll see it on Google, where you’ll find it enabled by default, but blurring is not available in Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo.

How to turn on Safe Search

To turn on Safe Search for your favorite search engine, try this:

1. Go to the search engine in your browser.
2. Look for and click the Settings button.
3. Find Safe Search, which is usually under Safety or Security, and then make sure it’s on.
4. Choose from Strict or Moderate filtering if necessary.

On Google, you’ll have the option to choose Blurring. We recommend selecting this with caution. It will mask explicit images so you can’t see them immediately, but it won’t stop explicit links and websites from appearing in your search results altogether, which means it’s not suitable cyber security for kids.

1. How to enable Safe Search on browser

You might be wondering how to enable Safe Search in your browser. It’s not usually possible to do this at the browser level. Instead, you can manage the feature through the settings menu for whichever search engine you use. Here are the steps for common search engines:

How to enable Safe Search on Google.com:

1. Click Settings in the bottom-right corner, then choose Search settings.
2. Select SafeSearch, then choose Filter, Blur, or Off.

How to enable Safe Search on Bing.com:

1. Click the options button (three lines) in the top-right corner.
2. Select SafeSearch, then set your settings to Strict, Moderate, or Off.

How to enable Safe Search on DuckDuckGo.com:

1. Click the options button (three lines) in the top-right corner, then choose Settings.
2. Use the drop-down box next to Safe Search to choose your preference from Strict, Moderate, or Off.

How to enable Safe Search on search.Yahoo.com:

1. Click the options button in the top-right corner.
2. Use the drop-down box next to Safe Search to update your settings. Strict, Moderate, and Off are the options available.

2. Enable Safe Search on your phone

You can enable Safe Search on your iPhone or Android device by following these steps in Safari, Chrome, or your web browser of choice:

1. Go to google.com and tap Settings > Search settings.
2. Select SafeSearch.
3. Choose Filter or Blur, depending on which setting you prefer.

Although these steps apply to Google search, a similar method will enable Safe Search on Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and other search engines you may choose to use. But remember, each one requires you to set and manage their Safe Search settings individually.

Common issues and troubleshooting with Safe Search

Although Safe Search is pretty reliable these days, you may encounter issues from time to time. Here are some troubleshooting tips:

• Check your Safe Search settings to make sure they’re correct.
• Confirm parental controls aren’t overriding Safe Search.
• See if your device or browser is managed by a school or organization.

Remember that while Safe Search is effective, it’s not completely foolproof. There are times when explicit content or adult websites slip through the net and appear in your results even though Safe Search is on. That’s why we suggest using the feature alongside other security tools and privacy extensions.

Also, Safe Search cannot protect you from malicious websites that spread spyware and viruses. Use Clario Anti Spy setup to secure your device. It helps you check app permissions to weed out potential spy apps that are accessing your camera and microphone without your knowledge.

Here’s how to use Clario Anti-spy setup on your phone:

1. Download Clario Anti Spy and create an account to start using the app.
2. Tap Set up under Anti-spy setup.
3. Select each of the anti-spy protections and follow the steps.

How to turn off Safe Search

To disable Safe Search in your browser, go to your favorite search engine, enter the settings menu, and set your Safe Search preference to Off. It’s impossible to control Safe Search settings at the browser level, so you’ll need to do this for each search engine you use.

1. Disabling Safe Search in browsers

You can easily turn off Safe Search from within a search engine’s settings menu like so:

1. Go to Google or your favorite search engine in your browser.
2. Find and click the Settings button.
3. Look for Safe Search, then set it to Off.

It’s best to leave Safe Search on whenever possible, especially if you share a device with kids, but again, it doesn’t offer any protection against malware, viruses, and other cyber threats. For that, there are other online safety tips you can use to protect yourself and your devices.

2. Turn Safe Search off in different operating systems

You can turn Safe Search off on iOS and Android by opening Safari or Chrome and following these steps:

1. On Google, select Settings at the bottom of the page, then tap Search settings.
2. Tap SafeSearch.
3. Select Off.

Conclusions

Enabling Safe Search prevents explicit and potentially harmful content from appearing in your search results on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other platforms. It’s a super easy way to clean up your online experience and protect children who might use the same device as you.

Don’t forget, however, that Safe Search can’t protect you from viruses and spyware. Use Clario Anti Spy setup to secure your iPhone or Android device. Its permissions checker helps you identify apps that they could be using to spy on you, like your camera and microphone.