SkieWhat is the safe-sites filter in Chrome and does Skie turn it on?
The safe-sites filter is a Chrome policy that blocks pages Google classifies as explicit, and Skie turns it on by default on managed devices. It sits beside the filtering DNS as a second check inside the browser. Students cannot turn it off, and admins can set it per group.
Chrome has a managed setting that asks Google's classifier whether a page is adult-oriented before it loads, and blocks it if so. Skie enforces this setting as the device owner, so it is not an option the user sees or can change.
Why have it when the DNS already filters? Because the two look at different things. A DNS filter decides by domain. The safe-sites filter looks at the page the browser is about to show, which catches content on domains that are otherwise acceptable, such as a proxy page or a user-generated site. That is the reason it appears in the answer to the common worry about proxy websites.
It is one of the Chrome rules Skie applies to Chrome stable, beta, dev and canary. The others are SafeSearch, YouTube Restricted Mode, safe browsing, secure DNS off, incognito blocked, search engine locked, sign-in blocked, sync off, pop-ups and notifications blocked, and internal pages blocked.
A limit to state plainly: it only applies inside Chrome. Other browsers are never allowed on the device, so there is no second browser to compare against, but any app that embeds its own web view is controlled by what is on the group's app list.
In the dashboard the rule shows up in the effective policy for a group. Check it there when a teacher asks why a site will not open, then report anything wrongly blocked so the filter choice can be reviewed.