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Parental Controls vs Private Browsing

I've got two teenagers that share an iMac. It is running Leopard. I am the 'administrator' for their computer and I have enabled Parental Controls on each of their accounts. I am mainly just using the 'Try to limit access to adult sites" option as well as following the log of sites they visit. They know I can see where they have been by checking the log (which I can do remotely from my other Macs).

What I'm wondering is, if they select "Private Browsing" in Safari, do the sites they browse still show up in the log?

Are there any other ways they can defeat the 'log'?

Message was edited by: GTB

20" Core Duo iMac, 17" Core Duo iMac, 14" iBook G4, PowerMac G4 350, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Feb 13, 2008 5:37 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 11, 2008 5:51 PM

You guys are creepy. Unless your kids are younger, you shouldn't be spying on them. What if they want to do some research about their health or about something they are uncomfortable with you knowing about?

You can teach them where they should and shouldn't be on the net and whatnot, but logging where someone who is 13 or older has gone is downright creeptastic if the person is personally identifiable, which in this case they are.

Same thing for IMs. Those are private information, and shouldn't be logged by anyone other than the participants in the conversation. Plus, logging IMs of someone else is just downright goofy, because if they want to say something and they don't want you to know it, they can just pick up the phone or talk to someone in person and there would be no record of it.

If they want filtering and know how to bypass it then that's OK (under 13 should probably have it but still know how to bypass it), but if they don't then its not and is an invasion of privacy and freedom on the internet.

Where you go is not public information, it is aggregate logs on huge ISPs and webservers and Google who handle millions of accounts doing billions of requests and aggregate the data in a non personally-identifiable way.

Yes, Google has all the email and searches of most power users, myself included, but there really isn't a privacy trade-off there, as it is probably more secure than most email services.
9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 11, 2008 5:51 PM in response to wanster

You guys are creepy. Unless your kids are younger, you shouldn't be spying on them. What if they want to do some research about their health or about something they are uncomfortable with you knowing about?

You can teach them where they should and shouldn't be on the net and whatnot, but logging where someone who is 13 or older has gone is downright creeptastic if the person is personally identifiable, which in this case they are.

Same thing for IMs. Those are private information, and shouldn't be logged by anyone other than the participants in the conversation. Plus, logging IMs of someone else is just downright goofy, because if they want to say something and they don't want you to know it, they can just pick up the phone or talk to someone in person and there would be no record of it.

If they want filtering and know how to bypass it then that's OK (under 13 should probably have it but still know how to bypass it), but if they don't then its not and is an invasion of privacy and freedom on the internet.

Where you go is not public information, it is aggregate logs on huge ISPs and webservers and Google who handle millions of accounts doing billions of requests and aggregate the data in a non personally-identifiable way.

Yes, Google has all the email and searches of most power users, myself included, but there really isn't a privacy trade-off there, as it is probably more secure than most email services.

Feb 14, 2008 7:45 AM in response to GTB

Well, since no one seems to know, or care, I did the work myself. I hate when that happens 🙂

In any case, when Safari is set to Private Browsing the sites visited are still logged into the Parental Controls log column. So in an account that is subject to parental controls, Private Browsing is not so private. Which is as it should be.

In addition, I found the log to be a very useful tool.

1) You can link to the sites that are logged so you can see where your kids have been
2) For each site visited you can elect to have Parental Controls block it.
3) There is also a log of sites that were blocked. You can visit these also, and unblock them if you wish.
4) The log records the date and times a site is visited. We do not allow our kids on the internet when we (parents) are not home. The log will tell us if they have ignored that 'decree'.

All in all, very useful. And just to clear the air, I have chosen not to use Parental Controls as a spying tool. I have explained to my kids how the log and all Parental Controls work so they know that where they go is basically public info. And I've tried to explain that for the most part that anywhere any of us goes on the internet is public info anyway.

Parental Controls vs Private Browsing

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