How To Configure Bing Safe Search

Microsoft provides a way for parents and schools to enforce SafeSearch on all browsers and devices from your network. That’s done by leveraging Bing’s Safe IP address – that can’t be undone at the browser level.

By applying these changes, any search done from Bing will restrict the results to only kid-safe links.

If you are using CleanBrowsing, we enforce Bing Safe Search automatically and you do not have to take any of these steps.

Configuring Bing Safe Search

Bing’s SafeSearch works by re-mapping Bing’s IP address to the CNAME strict.bing.com. Instead of visiting Bing at the normal IP addresses, you will re-route the traffic to this location provided by Microsoft that will always enforce a clean browsing experience.

Re-mapping via /etc/hosts

The first way to do that is via the /etc/hosts file on your Mac or Linux (or \WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows). That file overwrites the IP address of any domain configured there. For the SafeSearch, you have to open this file and map all the bing.com domains to 204.79.197.220:

204.79.197.220 www.bing.com bing.com
204.79.197.220 www2.bing.com
204.79.197.220 www3.bing.com

To verify it is working, save the file and go to bing.com to confirm Safesearch can’t be disabled.

Re-mapping at your router

Re-mapping at your router can be a bit more difficult. You have to login to your router, and find the DNS and Domain mapping option (It might be under DHCP or Settings on some router versions). Once you find the place to map domain names, you will have to add the IP address 204.79.197.220 as the map for www.bing.com and bing.com.

Safe Searching

Safe Searching is a critical step to keep your kids safe online. We recommend doing the same changes for Google to keep the same level of security as Bing. Another option is to use CleanBrowsing, as we deal with it automatically for you.