After plenty of coverage about how its Bing search engine makes it all too easy for kids to find and view porn, Microsoft has made some changes that will make it easier for parents to block or monitor what their kids are viewing on the site.
In a blog post, Microsoft announced that it is making two changes the company thinks will help address the issue.
According to the post, "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."
With this change, parents should be able to use parental control tools to block that domain and therefore block the images and videos. Almost all third-party filtering tools can be configured to block specific domains or sites, as can the parental controls in Microsoft Vista and Mac OS X.
Microsoft will also return the "source URL" information of specific images and videos, so if a filtering program blocks that site, it will prevent the video or image from being viewed within Bing. For example, if there is a video playing at Playboy.com, a filtering program that blocks Playboy would also prevent someone from viewing the content from inside Bing.
I tested this by right-clicking on a thumbnail of an explicit video in Bing and looking at properties. The URL of the image began with "ts3.explicit.bing.net." When I right-clicked on a sexual photograph, it contained "ts1.explicit.bing.net."
In an e-mail, Microsoft spokesman David Burt said the company has reached out to more than 25 filtering and security vendors to work with them to provide a solution for filtering explicit content while using Bing.
Bing raised the ire of some Internet safety advocates when it was discovered that all you have to do to watch an explicit video or view an image was to hover your mouse over its thumbnail within a Bing search. Although Bing's default settings would not bring up sexually explicit content, it did display an invitation saying "to view these videos, turn off safe search." One click later, the videos would start to play.
Microsoft's changes are likely to silence some--but not all--critics. Cris Clapp from the Internet safety group Enough is Enough said that "the steps they've taken are good," but added "it's important for them to make it more intuitive to guide parents to change filter settings."
These new features should also make it easier for schools and businesses to filter student or employee access to explicit content.
I'm pleased that Microsoft responded relatively quickly to concerns about how easy it was for kids to find and view porn. But even with these changes, parents still need to stay in close touch with how their kids are using Bing or any other Internet site. Not all families will want to use Internet filters. I didn't when my kids were younger but instead had frequent conversations with them about appropriate Internet use. But these changes should be welcome news for those parents who do choose to use tools to filter or monitor their kids' access. Without filters in place, it will still be easy for kids to access porn from within Bing, but at least parents will soon be able to block it if that's what they want to do.
As I pointed out in an earlier post, searching for certain terms on Microsoft's new Bing.com search engine brings up videos that display hardcore porn within the Web site and because the porn is playing within Bing instead of the site where it's hosted, the videos are not necessarily blocked by parental control filters. And monitoring programs designed to tell parents where their kids have been are likely to simply report Bing.com instead of the site that actually hosts the video.
As Tom Krazit pointed out, Microsoft has responded to the issue in a blog post Thursday. That post is defensive--"we think our current search safety settings are solid"--but it does acknowledge "we also are listening to customers, and some have told us they want more control and they want it now."
The company says that it has a "short term workaround" but not only do I find the description of the workaround incomprehensible, I couldn't get it to work even while on the phone with a Microsoft executive. If you can figure out how to implement these instructions, please let me know:
So for right now, we wanted to let people know that you can add "adlt=strict" to the end of a query and no matter what the settings are for that session, it will return results as if safe search was set to strict. The query would look like this: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=adulttermgoeshere&adlt=strict (yes it is case sensitive)."
But even if this can be made to work, it might help companies prevent employees from viewing porn but doesn't even begin to address the concerns of parents who don't want their kids playing porn movies from within the search engine of the world's largest software company.
To its credit Microsoft does have a "SafeSearch" option that does not bring up porn. In fact, it's the default setting. The problem is that if someone searches for an adult term with the setting on strict or moderate, they immediately get an invitation to "change your SafeSearch setting" right there on the screen. I love things that are user-friendly but, for kids, that may be a bit too user-friendly. At the very least, Microsoft would be better off following Google's example by requiring the user to manually go into the preference area to change the settings. It wouldn't stop a cybersavvy teen from finding porn, but it would at least slow them down a bit. And it probably would stop younger users from finding it. Another solution would be to have a family version of Bing with a different URL. The best solution is probably simply not to let porn videos play within Bing.
I'm not suggesting there is a silver bullet to this problem and I understand that Microsoft may have been caught by surprise over this, but it strikes me that a solution can be found and quickly implemented.
In the meantime I did get an e-mail today from Microsoft's Chuck Cosson telling me, "today we provided filtering companies as well as network administrators with a simple solution for restricting Bing to filtered searches." And he added, "while we give some further thought to Bing, I think it's also still our thinking that safe search settings on a single search engine can't substitute for a complete parental control offering--one reason to work with the filtering companies for example, but also that will inform how we respond here over time."
I agree. I don't think it's appropriate to demand that Microsoft make its search engine entirely kid-friendly. Porn may be inappropriate for kids and distasteful to some, but the type of porn you find on Bing is legal material and adults should have a right to search for it. I think parents do have the responsibility to set and enforce rules for their kids and, in some cases, monitor what their kids are doing online. But I also think Microsoft needs to put a bit more thought into how it can better empower parents to shield their kids from inappropriate material without censoring search results for adults. This may not be easy but it is possible.
As a followup to my post from Tuesday about the ability for someone to view porn from within Bing, I just heard from a Symantec spokesperson that the company's Internet monitoring and filtering service, OnlineFamily.Norton (review), can't yet prevent Bing users from searching sexually explicit terms for Web sites or videos. The company plans to add Bing to its protected search engines in the next release. Other major search engines, including Google, are covered by the software's SafeSearch feature.
In the meantime, Symantec recommends that parents use OnlineFamily.Norton to block access to all of Bing--which isn't particularly good for Microsoft.
OnlineFamily is a free Windows and Mac application that can be used to block sites and monitor a child's online behavior. Unlike some Internet-monitoring programs, it doesn't operate in stealth mode so, if parents use that feature, kids know that their Web activities are being watched.
Because Bing plays videos within its own site and doesn't require the user to click through, checking the browser history or using monitoring programs like OnlineFamily would only show that they visited Bing.com, not what videos they watched from within the site.
I tested this feature quickly and with great caution on board a Virgin America WiFi equipped flight, being careful to shield the screen from fellow passengers and crew.
When I searched for a word that was sure to bring up porn, I was first warned that it "may return explicit adult content" and told that "to view these videos, turn off safe search." One click later, safe search was off and I was looking a page of naughty thumbnails. And, as advertised, hovering the mouse over a thumbnail started the video and audio. Even when playing in a small thumbnail, it was unmistakably hard core porn.
Of course, kids don't need Bing to find and view porn. You can find it with Google and other search engines, and even though Google has a filtered search option, there's nothing to stop someone from turning that off. But Microsoft makes it a little too easy. If moderate or strict filtering is on and you search for a filtered term, the site simply instructs you to click a link to "change your SafeSearch setting." If you configure Google for "strict filtering," a user who searches for a filtered term on Google simply sees that the word or phrase "did not match any documents." Of course a kid can always go in and change Google's settings but they have to know how to do it and bother doing it. Microsoft makes it all too easy.
I don't know if Microsoft plans to do deal with this issue in any updates, but regardless of whether your kid uses Bing, Google, or Yahoo, or just knows the URLs of porn sites, the only ways to protect your kids from accessing porn is either to watch them, educate them, or filter them.
Watching them might work with very young children but it's not exactly practical for teens or even pre-teens. I recommend that kids under eight be supervised when using a device with Internet access. Education will work with many kids but not all. Parents certainly have the right to set rules and guidelines and impose consequences if their kids access forbidden sites. But, let's face it, hormones, curiosity, and just plain interest in things sexual can have a strong pull on kids, especially teenage boys. Besides, some younger kids could stumble on porn if they use any unfiltered search engine, even if they're just looking for innocuous terms like "Barbie."
Filtering programs (or the parental controls built into Vista and Mac OS X) will block most porn sites, but it's not yet entirely clear which ones will prevent Bing from previewing such sites. Safe Eyes filtering software "blocks all pornographic content on Bing and Google searches out of the box," according to a post on its company blog. From my perch in the sky, I wasn't able to check with other filtering companies, but I'm betting some will and some won't.
Coincidentally, I'm writing this post on the way to Washington, D.C. for the first meeting of the Commerce Department's NTIA Internet Safety Working Group, which I serve on. I have a feeling this will come up at Thursday's meeting. As one of my fellow working group members, Internet Keep Safe Coalition President Marsali Hancock, said by e-mail, "as new technologies release it is critical that industry and child health advocates explore the potential impact on young developing minds and quickly respond to health and safety concerns."
I'm going to keep on top of this issue with Microsoft and the filtering companies and will report back as this story unfolds.
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