Question 1

Protect my devices with Safe Surfer

Accepted Answer

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

1. Let's start

Protecting devices with Safe Surfer is easy. As a parent or accountability partner, we'll get you to start by creating a free account on the Safe Surfer dashboard. You can visit the dashboard on any of your own personal devices via a web browser like Firefox, Safari, or Google Chrome.

It should feel a little like this once we're done!

| You will be prompted to subscribe once you have created a new Safe Surfer account. Getting a Pro Surfer subscription gives you the ability to easily protect as many devices as you like with our range of over 50 filter categories. For example, Safe Surfer can block social media platforms, games, and even online gambling. You will also get our device monitoring tools! Find out more about subscription features and tiers on our Pricing webpage.

The Safe Surfer dashboard is your one-stop centre for everything to do with Safe Surfer. Once you have created an account, click the My Devices button on the left sidebar to get started.

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Question 2

How does the Safe Surfer DNS work?

Accepted Answer

| This article is still applicable to our products, but we now support encrypted DNS on modern devices. This means that we can encrypt your web browsing requests for a more private browsing experience. Check out our article here to find out more about the technologies behind this newer method of protection.

Safe Surfer provides you with a safer internet surfing experience. To achieve this, we use a technology called Domain Name System (DNS).

1. What's DNS?

DNS works behind the scenes on your devices so that you can easily surf the internet without having to memorise IP addresses. As a brief example, DNS "translates" the URL www.safesurfer.co.nz to the address 130.211.44.88.

Our DNS servers carry out the following functions:

Ensuring that your web browsing requests are following your filter settings. If not, the device will not be able to connect to the requested website.
Resolving your web browsing requests to IP addresses for your device to use.

2. Configuring devices to use Safe Surfer DNS servers

||| If you wish to manually configure a device to use Safe Surfer, you can use the information below. Typically you would only use the classic method if you are having trouble using our app on a device, or if you want to provide a default protection fallback (which can be overridden on a per-device basis for those who are tech-savvy!).

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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.

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—this all happens in the background. 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 you have a lot of favourite websites! This is where the Domain Name System (DNS) technology comes i

Question 4

Reset my 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 menu should appear. This button will only appear if you have previously signed in to the Safe Surfer app. Tap "Reset".

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

Once you have provided your login details, the menu will prompt you to enter a new pin. You can now use this pin to sign in to the app.

Question 5

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

Question 6

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.

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 by visiting 192.168.8.1

| If you see any certificate warnings with older versions of the Lifeguard firmware, you can safely skip through them.

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 Firmwar

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