Question 1

How do I protect devices with Safe Surfer?

Accepted Answer

Safe Surfer protects individuals, families, and businesses from harmful online content. If you visit our home website on a device that is not protected with Safe Surfer, you will see the following widget in red:

Protection not enabled widget

Getting started with Safe Surfer

Filtering your devices with Safe Surfer is easy through our simple dashboard.

| You can create a Safe Surfer account here for free: https://my.safesurfer.io/create-account

The Safe Surfer dashboard is your centre for protecting devices that you own. Once you have created an account, click the My Devices button on the left sidebar to get started. Once you are on the My Devices page, click the Device Setup button at the upper-right. Here you can find links to an appropriate solution for each kind of device that you would like to protect.

Safe Surfer dashboard Device Setup page

Once you have downloaded the Safe Surfer app onto a device that you wish to protect, open it and sign in with your Safe Surfer account. This means that you will be able to provide specific filter settings for the device and monitor it—all from the dashboard.

| Devices can be protected for free with the Safe Surfer app. If you wish to have monitoring, you will need a subscription to do this (among other premium features) on th

Question 2

How does the Safe Surfer DNS work?

Accepted Answer

| This article is still applicable to our products, but we also now support newer DNS encryption methods on various devices. Check our our article here: https://helpdesk.safesurfer.io/en-nz/article/does-safe-surfer-support-dns-over-https-doh-or-dns-over-tls-dot-1xtasb9/

Safe Surfer utilises the latest computing technology to provide you with a safer Internet surfing experience. To achieve this, we use Domain Name System (DNS) servers to:

Resolve your Internet requests (URLs) to IP addresses for your web browser to use (eg safesurfer.co.nz resolves to an IP address of 130.211.44.88, even though you do not usually see this lookup process happen in your web browser).
Record, categorise, and subsequently block inappropriate websites.

If you wish to configure a device to manually use Safe Surfer, you can use the following information to set it up. Typically you would only use this information if you are having trouble using our app services on a device, or if you want to use basic Safe Surfer filtering on a device that we do not provide an app for.

Safe Surfer IPv4 DNS servers

These addresses are usually used to configure Internet routers or other Internet-connected devices, included but not limited to laptops, desktops, smart phones, and tablets. These devices may run Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS.

104.197.28.121 (primary)
104.155.237.225 (alternative)

Once you have configured protection, we recommend visiting our website (https://www.safesurfer.co.

Question 3

Does Safe Surfer support encrypted DNS (DoH or DoT)?

Accepted Answer

Safe Surfer invests in modern technologies to make surfing the web a safer experience for you. We have been keeping our eye on a new set of technologies that is being freshly released to devices by major technology companies and organisations via device updates: DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT).

Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla have been releasing support for DoH and DoT into their products since 2019 and 2020. In this article we will explain what these two terms are and how Safe Surfer will be using them in the future. To begin, it will be helpful to break down in layman's terms how the basics of Internet networking works. If you just want the brief on DoH and DoT, you can skip to the "How is DoH and DoT useful to me?" section.

Internet networking 101

When you visit a website URL (e.g. the Safe Surfer dashboard at https://my.safesurfer.io) in a web browser, your browser has to convert this URL to a special set of numbers it understands. When you use the Internet on a device, you are likely using a networking protocol called Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). When you download and upload any kind of data over the Internet, this protocol performs the data transport work for you in the background—you do not see any of this occur. IPv4 operates over the public Internet using a special set of numbers, and these numbers are unfriendly to memorise. For example, https://my.safesurfer.io "translates" to 104.198.62.31—these are not easy to remember when y

Question 4

How do I update my Wi-Fi Lifeguard router firmware?

Accepted Answer

Wi-Fi Lifeguard firmware updates often provide new features and bug fixes. Need to check for a firmware update for your Wi-Fi Lifeguard router? This guide will show you how to do it.

| We usually send out notification emails to our customers when a new firmware release is being rolled out.

If you have a mesh network, you only need to update your Wi-Fi Lifeguard base device. This is the Wi-Fi Lifeguard that is directly connected to your main home router via the Wi-Fi Lifeguard WAN port marked with a globe. Just follow the steps below—Wi-Fi Lifeguard will take care of the mesh configuration for you.

1. Log in to your Wi-Fi Lifeguard

Ensure that you are connected to your Wi-Fi Lifeguard network on the device that you will be using to initiate the firmware update. Using your favourite web browser (e.g. Google Chrome or Firefox) open the administration panel (https://mydevice.safesurfer.co.nz).

Enter in the email address and password that belong to your Safe Surfer account. If you have not made an account, the Wi-Fi Lifeguard administration panel will prompt you to create one.

Wi-Fi Lifeguard administration panel login page

2. Update your Wi-Fi Lifeguard

Click the System drop-down menu located on the sidebar on the left. Click on the Update Firmware page link. This page will tell you what firmware version you are currently on.

If an update is available, click the green Update Firmwa

Question 5

How do I reset my Safe Surfer account password?

Accepted Answer

This article will help you reset your Safe Surfer account password.

1. Request password reset

To reset your Safe Surfer Account password, visit https://my.safesurfer.io/send-password-reset

Enter the email associated with your Safe Surfer account and click Reset.

Safe Surfer account password reset request

2. Change password

If a Safe Surfer account is associated with the email you requested, you should receive an email within a minute. Click the Reset Password button found inside the email:

Reset Password email

Enter a strong password. Ideally you want a password that is at least 8-16 characters long, excludes full words, and contains a mix of characters, capital characters, numbers, and symbols. Make sure that you do not use this password anywhere else! Once you are done, click Change Password.

New Password boxes

3. Logging in to Wi-Fi Lifeguard

If you have a Safe Surfer Wi-Fi Lifeguard router, you should now be able to log in to its administration panel (https://mydevice.safesurfer.co.nz/) with your Safe Surfer account:

Wi-Fi Lifeguard administration panel login page

Question 6

How do I reset the Safe Surfer app pin on Android?

Accepted Answer

Locked out of the Safe Surfer app? This brief article will help you reset your app pin.

||| To reset your Safe Surfer app pin, you or an accountability partner must have previously signed into the app with a Safe Surfer account.

1. Pin reset

Open the Safe Surfer app. The pin prompt box should appear. At the lower left of the box, tap Reset pin code. This button will only appear if you have previously signed in to the Safe Surfer app.

Pin box

The app will ask you for your Safe Surfer account login details.

Reset Pin menu

Once you have successfully signed in, the menu will prompt you to enter a new pin. You can now use this pin to sign in to the app.

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