Parental controls not working

I'm seeing this problem a lot of the time. Both on a new iMac and also an
intel mac-mini. Like other people, I at first thought
that my kids had my password, but not the case. Parental controls just don't
seem to work very well! It's a badly broken feature boarding on useless.

I have G5 and a Mac book and I can't even get into Parental controls on either because it keeps quitting (just a parental control quits)
I don't think it works as my daughter seems to be on it for hours.

It's about as useless as a chocolate tea pot, and to be quite honest, more dangerous

Reporting same/similar issues. Managed account time limits not working, account has access during times not allowed in the bedtime settings.

Hi - just to add another name to the discussion. I have three kids who are allowed access to the MacBook, but for differing amounts weekday/weekends and with differing bedtimes. Whether it works, appears very problematic, and most of the time it doesn't seem to log them out; record their time accurately (I've checked the log for my oldest who is allowed an hour/day M-F, only to find the log displays >1.20m of activity). My 6 yr old put chewing gum on the screen at the w/e, so he now has a "wakeup" + "bedtime" of 11pm ... yet he's not showing as locked out as I write.

I can't believe this has been going on so long without Apple acting! Come on guys - I thought "Apple - it just works" refers to how easy they are to use, rather than what our kids find once they've exceeded their allotted hours.

Steve

Further info:

I have this problem on two Intel based iMacs running Boot Camp. Machines are booted in to both Windows and Mac OS daily. I have noticed that the computer's clock seems to be different in each OS. They will both sync to an internet clock, but on initial boot the clock may not be accurate. Could defiantly be related to this problem.

I was hoping 10.5.6 would fix this issue, but still having same problems.

Same here, I'm just so disappointed that Apple hasn't managed to smoke these bugs out. In addition to the problems described above I've also noticed that when I try to add extra time to an account using my administrator password, it logs into the limited account for a couple of seconds and then it logs out again. So it is failing in both logging out and logging in! In short it doesn't do what it is supposed to which makes it 100% unusable as security features like these are of either/or kind - you would never accept if your bank account was safe 99% of the time, right?

The reason to me is very obvious; no one at Apple uses this feature. Unfortunately, that means that they don't find the bugs during development. And even when they find them they are unlikely to prioritize them. I bet if the bug was in some network stack or command line thingie they used themselves, it would have been fixed by now. Those engineers should get some kids 😉

Apple, this is ridiculous. I am a long time Windows user and hater. I worked on the first Macs and was happy to come back recently. My return has not been all wonderful. But this really ticks me off. This feature has been around for some time and looks like it has never worked. As a parent, I put a certain amount of trust in Apple that this was working. Having this feature show up and be easy to use and not working, is worse than not having it at all. It dangerously brings a false sense of security.
Furthermore, on windows XP I was able to throw together a Win script to do the same thing as the Hours and Bedtime limiting. I also allowed limiting on a per application basis. Yet you guys can't seem to get this thing to work after a year of issues. This is not that complicated. And the fact that it is not fixed after all this time, means that nobody is trying to fix it.

Maybe you guys should watch that wonderful Mac vs Vista Commercial where MS is putting all money into marketing and ignoring the bugs. Maybe you could learn something.

Please do not take this wrong, but you are not talking to Apple in these forums. Just to other Mac users.

I would suggest:
<http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html>

Or get a free Apple Developer Connection (ADC) account and file a bug report:
<http://bugreporter.apple.com/>

Yes mine does the same thing, it will swing into the child's account with Admin access then instantly swing right back out to the Admin user before you can even do anything.


The whole thing is buggy, time outs and time limits work randomly.
Admin override mostly works not at all.
I run disk permissions and Parental control permissions always come up as errors, but the fix never fixes them. They just come right back.

If this happened on only one of my Macs I'd figure it was some problem in setup or a random permission problem. But it doesn't work properly on all the ones I've tried it on. In fact it's never worked properly since Leopard was released.

Very frustrating for a program that is important to me.

No offense taken and thanks for the information. I will try the other links. Based on some other posts, the fact this forum is under Apple.com and the path of:
Apple.com > Support > Discussions > Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard > Using Mac OS X Leopard

I assumed this forum was monitored by apple support.

Thanks again,

Chris

For anyone having parental control time limit enforcement issues, I have a couple of work arounds that should help you until Apple fixes this.

First make sure you update to 10.5.6 as I have found the parental controls works best with this version of OS X.

If your time limits are not being enforced properly, you can try one of the following and it should fix it.

1) In the accounts preference pane disable fast user switching. Time limits will be enforced properly after this change.

or

2) Check your Parental Controls preference pane to see if you have "Manage parental controls from another computer" . If your pane is locked, you will have to unlock it with your admin password to see the status of this option. Make sure the checkbox is unchecked(disabled) and your time limits should be enforced as expected.

I have experimented with both of these and either one seems to fix the problem.

Just tried this...fingers crossed!

I have been using the 2nd method listed in my previous post and it is working great. My kids have been trying to break it for the last few days and so far they have not been able to break the time limits.

So, parental controls is now working as expected! Did it work for you?

I reset both of my Macs, both had fast user switching on , one had remote box checked. I need the weekend with my son working hard at it ( supposedly behind my back) to see if he can still figure out a workaround.

I'l report back next week....

Even so Apple needs to fix it or at least tell us it won;t work with Fast User switching as that's another handy feature we use at my house.