Internet is a vast network of websites and webpages hosting information and data on numerous topics. While most of us use a couple of websites on regular basis, there are instances when a certain query brings up something different on our screen. These innocent looking links could lead us to unknown and unsafe pages that could harm us.
These pages could have gory, violent, or pornographic imagery that could harm the users in numerous ways. If a child surfs the web under the supervision of parents or teachers, it is safe, but without any supervision, the internet can become a nasty place for such young minds.
This is where Google’s latest SafeSearch feature comes into the picture. With this tool, Google is aiming to make internet a safer place for not just children but adults as well.
Let’s learn more about this feature in detail.
Making the Web a Safer Place
With the increase in the demand for a safer web browsing experience for all, Google has introduced a new online safety feature called SafeSearch for its users. This feature was announced by the tech mogul on its Safer Internet Day event held on 7th February, 2023.
As the name suggests, the SafeSearch feature is has been introduced to make the internet a safer place for all users, irrespective of age. The feature will blur any images on a webpage that could potentially harm a person or incite negative thoughts.
Images appearing in the searches containing graphic, violent, mature, or pornographic content will be blurred automatically for the protection of the users. The users, however, will get a choice to remove the blur and look at them by clicking on the ‘View image’ button.
Users will have the option to tune it accordingly based upon their query requirements or completely disable this feature. Disabling the feature will display all the related search queries, including the explicit ones. However, if your Google account is managed by your organization or school or parents, you won’t be able to disable this setting.
One must remember that the SafeSearch feature will be applicable only on the Google search results and won’t block any explicit content or results appearing on other search engines. This leaves room for other search engines to follow suit and apply a similar countermeasure.
Google introduced this feature and announced that this will be enabled by default for all the users who are signed-in and are under 18 years. In case you are signed out of your Google account, you will not see this feature enabled by default. For this, you will have to do it manually by following the instructions here. You can also use this link to learn about modifying the SafeSearch filter according to your needs.
This measure taken up by Google is a stepping stone towards realizing the dream of a safer internet for everyone.
What if My Old Images Have Become Blurry?
Google’s SafeSearch feature will ensure safety and protection of users from mature content, but what if the images that are already stored on your computer become blurry and pixelated? Unexpected blurriness or pixilation in images is rare but can happen due to multiple reasons like file corruption, outdated graphics driver, malware infection, and more.
If you have found that some of your images become hazy or blurred, you can repair the files and get them back to their original state. For this, you can use a powerful photo repair tool, which can help in repairing damaged or corrupted photographs and images present on your computer.
A Photo Recovery tool that it is dedicated software designed for fulfilling only one purpose– to repair images of any file format is the best option to repair any corrupt or damaged photos. Some Photo Repair software can also handle various data corruption scenarios like malware attack, file corruption, and so on.
And the best part about these software is that they even support file repairing of RAW images along with numerous other file formats like JPEG, JPG, TIFF, DNG, CRW, and more.
Final Thoughts
The vastness of internet is ever-increasing and hence, we can only do so much to make it a safer place for all of us and especially for the younger generation. Hence, measures like SafeSearch matter a lot. Google deploying this tool will help the users use internet with safety. It will also help people become aware about sites that could potentially harm their computers and inject malware to steal data or simply corrupt the files. We hope that more search engines will deploy a similar feature to safeguard their users against mature content and viruses that hide in plain sight.
