Question 1

How Can I Protect My Device With Safe Surfer?

Accepted Answer

Safe Surfer protects families and individuals from harmful online content. If a device you own is not using our filter service, you will see the following widget on our website (https://www.safesurfer.co.nz):

Protection not enabled widget

Safe Surfer provides a number of easy filtering solutions for you and your family. This brief article will help you get your devices protected so you can surf the Internet without fear.

Safe Surfer services are controlled by a Safe Surfer Account (setup here: https://my.safesurfer.io). You can make a Safe Surfer account here: https://my.safesurfer.io/create-account

1. Android and Apple apps

The easiest way to protect your family is to download our mobile app and enable protection on your devices:

If you have an Android device, you can get Safe Surfer on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.safesurfer
If you have an Apple device (iPhone or iPad), you can download Safe Surfer on the App Store here: https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/safe-surfer/id1219926557

Once you have downloaded the app, open it and sign in to your Safe Surfer account. Enable protection, you can find your newly protected device available for configuration with Safe Surfer account with a Pro Surfer subscription. When you make filter configurations for each device you control on your Safe Surfer account, the Safe Surfer app will appl

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

What Does Screencast Detection (Machine Learning) Do on Android?

Accepted Answer

The Safe Surfer app features machine learning technology to aid in avoiding suggestive nudity and pornographic content. We use a content model bulit-in to the app to understand whether content being viewed on-screen is likely to be pornographic or not.

| By default, Screencast detection will temporarily black out the device screen when suggestive content is detected. A screenshot of the suggestive content will be kept securely on the device within the app. If you have accountability insight alerts enabled, these screenshots will be given securely to accountability holders.

|| Want to view securely kept screenshots of when Screencast detection triggered a detection? You can view these in Settings > Machine learning model > Events history

Enabling Screencast detection

To enable Screencast detection, tap the menu button found at the top left of the app home screen. This will open the Home menu:

Screencast detection option

Tap Screencast detection and select Turn On:

Turn on Screencast detection

Tap Start Now to grant the Safe Surfer app casting and recording permissions for this session. By default, all information used by the machine learning model built into the Safe Surfer app stays on the device—none of this data is ever sent to us. Optionally, you can enable alerts which will give you

Question 4

How Can I Update My Wi-Fi Lifeguard 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

What Does the Wi-Fi Lifeguard Screentime Feature Do?

Accepted Answer

Wi-Fi Lifeguard's Screentime feature allows you to set per-device Internet time limits. You can access it from your Wi-Fi Lifeguard administration panel (https://mydevice.safesurfer.co.nz).

From the Screentime menu on the sidebar, you can select a device (or all devices) to change Internet access settings.

Once you have selected a device, you can begin to configure the settings you wish to apply.

| You can have different settings for different days via the drop down menu at the top middle

Screentime menu

You have the ability to set a total Internet time access limit for each device. This means that Internet accessed through Wi-Fi Lifeguard for each configured device will not work until the allocated time has been started (and later paused once the device has finished using the Internet). When you want to use Internet on a device that has a Screentime limit applied to it, visit https://mydevice.safesurfer.co.nz/block to start the timer for Internet access.

||| Stop the timer by visiting https://mydevice.safesurfer.co.nz/block again and selecting the Stop Timer button so that each device's time does not run out.

Screentime timer ready on a configured device

Screentime timer started on a configured device

Going back to

Question 6

Does Safe Surfer Support DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or DNS over TLS (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 (eg the My Safe Surfer website: 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 you

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