Comments on: Kid Proofing a Mac With Parental Controls

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:09:20 +0000

My 16 year old is somehow logging onto my account despite me changing passwords in case he’s looked over my shoulder. Any ideas on how this is possible and what I can do to stop it?

By: Momoftoosmart-teen

Momoftoosmart-teen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:28:53 +0000

My son has somehow managed to get around the time limits we have set up through parental control. He does not have my password and the parental controls are locked. How is this happening? Is he re-powering it or what? Please help!

By: AKA motherof

AKA motherof — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:43:13 +0000

Tried to follow instructions but my the “admin log-in + password” is lost, changed or forgotten on the desk Mac. So now what? How do I make the new accounts for my teen and tweenie?
Also, we mistakenly didn’t take original control of out laptop Mac we gave our young teen. Now that we want better school grades, we can’t get in. What to do?

By: tbkblues

tbkblues — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:07:28 +0000

I totally agree; MAC parental controls are badly implemented and virtually worthless. You’d think they were using Microsoft’s development methodologies as their model now. Good job, idiots.

By: Howdy

Howdy — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:50:29 +0000

Eching what Noel said – what is top of class for Parental Controls on a Mac, and I’m willing to pay (a reasonable amount of) money?

I made a mistake recently by giving my son access to Google (“Hey Dad, can you give me access to Google so I can look up XYZ for school.” “Sure, Son.”) Folks, evidently it wasn’t temporary access.

Fast forward a few weeks/months later and he’s surfing Google Books for risque bodice rippers. Could have been worse had we not had the Parental Controls in place, but there are other examples of him successfully hitting the fringes of porn.

Looking for an interface that is easier to use than Mac’s, and an email alert when he hits a restricted site I think would be helpful. Appreciate you comments.

By: Noel

Noel — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:51:35 +0000

OK, so I’ve been through all of these postings – the good, the bad and ugly. Can anyone suggest an alternative to Apple’s Parental Controls?

I’m willing to pay for a third party solution that really works.

Thanks soontobedad for the K9 suggestion – I’ll check it out.

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:37:21 +0000

I am so frustrated that my kids cannot access Microsoft word on their account. No matter what I do to set it up they cannot use it. I am always forced to close down the kids account and let them use the regular account. I am not satisfied.

By: Pincer

Pincer — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:41:34 +0000

Apple’s parental control are great except one HUGE problem. Any secure server will be blocked –that includes yahoo mail. They can’t send or receive email!! That is bad, very bad… in fact it makes Apple’s parental controls worthless. If you could only allow mail through (you can’t).

How could they have made such a fundamental mistake.

Their own kids don’t get email?

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:14:43 +0000

As for the anonymous reply, I’d suggest you lock all the System Preferences just by clicking the lock on the left bottom. You’ll need an admins name & password to change any settings made.
My problem with Parental Controls is pretty weird, when I activate Parental controls on any account, it blocks certain Flash Player scripts on all accounts except the admin. There is no such setting around in Parental Controls as far as I know, but I’d like to hear if anyone else have the same problem so I can try and fix it. My son is playing an MMORPG based running Flash, but it will block during activation of Parental Controls.. I only use the feature for the time limits, all other blocking/limiting applications I tried he found a way to bug them or so.

Thanks

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:21:13 +0000

Do you know how to block certain preferences in system preferences?

By: soonTObeDAD

soonTObeDAD — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:30:42 +0000

I am trying to figure out what parental controls will work best for our family. I haven’t tried using Apple’s yet but if any of you are looking for another option, K9 web protection is a good one and allows you to do all of the things that you need. Its free and logs everything, blocks whatever you want and whatever categories you want.

By: imscrappymom

imscrappymom — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:44:36 +0000

I wish we could place parental controls on the admin. I basically leave my computer on all the time and the kids can use mine. Unless I remember to log out after each time I use it (and I can’t do that), then it only works if they log in on their own account, right?

By: Furious mom No.2

Furious mom No.2 — Mon, 18 May 2009 03:42:48 +0000

I have exactly the same problem as “Furious mom”. None of the websites visited by my son showed up in the log. I cannot figure out why. My son even told me that even if he deleted all the history in Safari, I could still see what websites he visited because there is something called “cache” (I am not technically competent to understand what this is!)

Also, I set the Content in parental control to “try to limit access to adult websites automatically” but many times when I opened parental controls, I found that this was changed to “allow unrestrictd access to websites”. There is no way my son can change this as he does not have my password.

Can someone help please?

By: John

John — Sun, 10 May 2009 03:24:26 +0000

I want to know why the parental control logs don’t correspond with the Safari history logs. How do you know which one is actually correct?

By: Todd

Todd — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:15:45 +0000

It would be nice if Apple would fix the kernel panic problems. If you have Parental Control turned on and use Entourage to send a large picture attachment, you get a Kernel Panic.

I am not alone.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1349230

By: Jean Roux

Jean Roux — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:17:42 +0000

Apple’s Parental control is a joke and a lie.
#7 is 100% right. Using the interface described above, I thought my kid could not use any Internet browser so that he would not be exposed to all that government-regulated crap. Guess what is is true that the Safari, Firefox… icons are gone but when he click on a button that leads to a webpage (for instance a “Purchase a license” button on a application that leads to the store of the software developer), Safari pops up!!!
Apple should stop thinking that just because they are cool they can fool parents!
Let me go back to my windows PC and see if it’s better.
To the writer of this blog. You are way too gullible to write about Apple and the Mac; be a little more critical and Apples says things.

By: Furious Mom

Furious Mom — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:30:43 +0000

The parental control is a joke at best; dangerous at worst. It gives you the option of only authorizing specific websites – which I did, only allowing a couple of school approved websites. The log then showed me my 8 year old kid was spending time on Itunes. I checked and discovered that the downloading movies, checking out previews.

I then discovered that the ” content – only allow access to these websites” option is a complete lie. A number of web-based programs are allowed through other programs – the Ilife suite programs (which includes Itunes…); Widgets (Itunes again; ESPN; weather channels). Oh, and of course the Apple store is accessible no matter what you block…

I called Apple to complain, and never heard back. Really sickening… you can bar internet access EXCEPT for apple products and sites.

By: jan

jan — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:05:12 +0000

Ditto on the lack of logging on parental controls. I have searched the apple support site and many “mac” forums and cannot locate a fix that works to repair this.
Also, whenever i go into parental controls to check for logs, I get a “kernel panic” and parental controls shuts down. I have repaired permissions and this does not fix the problem.
We are updated to Leopard 10.5.6. I wish there was a patch or fix to download for parental controls only.

At least when a Windows OS has a problem a fix is easy to find and download from Micorsoft.

By: Kiml

Kiml — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:27:58 +0000

I am having the same problem as above. Logs are not showing up for one of my children. The others are fine, but absolutely nothing is showing up on the one. Has he found some way around it? And is there anything I can do about it?

By: Avesao

Avesao — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:43:51 +0000

I have three kids and i’m quite an enthusiast user of parental control feature. Nevertheless this week I noticed that the log for visited website doesn’t seem accurate. All the visits of the day before weren’t logged despite the history of the browser shows that my son surfed the web. Is it a bug of parental control? Did my son discover a way to prevent the log of his activity despite the directives of parental control?