Now Bing has a red-light area to filter out porn

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: When Microsoft launched the new search engine Bing, it created a 'big bang' for all the wrong reasons. The discussion was not about the new search engine's potential to pose a challenge to Google, but it was all about the possibility of enjoying porn videos with no strings attached!

Though Bing had blocked access to such images and videos in some 'conservative' countries following the controversy, it was quite simple to break that firewall by simply changing the name of the country to some of those 'liberal' ones. And even now Bing functions in the same way. While porn is blocked in countries like 'India', in the US it is more than open on Bing!

However, now after the criticism from far and wide the software giant has decided to go bit hard on the porn front with a provision of filters.

In an official blogpost recently, Bing general manager Mike Nichols said that it has adjusted Bing to make it easier to filter out porn. There are two changes, which according to Microsoft, will help address the issue.

First, potentially explicit images and video content will now be coming from a separate single domain, explicit.bing.net.

“This is invisible to the end customer, but allows for filtering of that content by domain which makes it much easier for customers at all levels to block this content regardless of what the SafeSearch settings might be,” the blogpost said.

With this change, parents should be able to use parental control tools to block that domain and therefore block the images and videos, even if SafeSearch has been turned off.

“In addition, Bing will begin returning source URL information in the query string for images and video content so that companies who already use this method of filtering will be able to catch explicit content on Bing along with everything else they are already blocking for their customers,” said Mike.

But there are people like Cris Clapp from the Internet safety group 'Enough is Enough', who think Bing has to become more intuitive to guide parents to change filter settings.

But our kids are experts enough to break any firewalls – be it in the cyber space or the real space! Do you think such filters are strong enough to block the 'inquisitiveness' of the young who can jump across any fence to reach their destination?