Bing moves all adult content to explicit.bing.net | Ars Technica

Biz & IT —

Bing moves all adult content to explicit.bing.net

Microsoft has made two changes for explicit content that Bing returns, but don …

According to the Bing Blog, Microsoft has made two changes to Bing in response to companies that want to filter adult content: potentially explicit images and video content will now be coming from a single domain, explicit.bing.net, and source URL information will now be returned in the query string for images and video content. For those wondering, no, explicit.bing.net is not a porn portal, navigating to it will simply redirect you to bing.com.

If that's the bad news (ahem!), the good news is that the "Bing experience" does not change whatsoever for the user (that's how it should be done!), but companies that want to filter adult content have it much easier now. A single domain makes it much easier for customers at all levels to block adult content regardless of what the SafeSearch settings might be, and the extra URL information (example: http://ts2.explicit.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=974382499649&id=12ae77a7fed979b0502840bedacd2552&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.explicitsite.com%2fexplicit-picturegoeshere.jpg) will be useful to companies who already use this method of filtering.

Earlier this month, we reported that even without SafeSearch settings and without company or government filtering, Microsoft blocks sexual content in 12 of the 58 regions on Bing.

Channel Ars Technica