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Secure Connections and Parental Controls

I have Parental Controls turned on. I have the "Try to limit acccess to adult sites automatically" option selected. And in the Customize dialog, I have a list of Allowed sites.

The problem that I'm experiencing is that when I try to connect to some secure sites, sometimes Safari complains:

Safari can’t open the page "..." because it couldn’t establish a secure connection to the server “...”.

With Amazon, it partially connects. In the Allow list, I've got all the entries I could add for Amazon, such as http://*.amazon.com, https://*.amazon.com, and (where their secure images seem to come from) https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com.

However, the secure connection breaks down somewhere and I get a partial page with a lot of broken images. It is hard to click on a button when the image for it is missing.

To troubleshoot this problem, I turned off Parental Controls, and Amazon.com works great on a secure connection. Then, to rule out the possibility that my login is corrupt, I created a brand-new user account and it has the same problem with Amazon once I turn on the Parental Controls.

Amazon is just one example of this problem. I see it on other sites when I try to get to a secure page. But in all cases the problem seems to have to do with some component that is not working when a secure connection (HTTPS) and Parental Controls are both involved.

I've tried looking through all the system logs with no luck. I don't see any clues there. I even tried running tcpdump from the terminal to grab all the packet data, but I don't see anything obvious there either.

I like the filtering that Parental Controls provides. So what I really want to do is find a way to solve the conflict between HTTPS and Parental Controls.

The error that Safari gives is similar to the error given when an SSL certificate has expired. So maybe Parental Controls is somehow blocking a certificate from being validated and breaking the validation chain?

Thanks for reading this far,
JDetwiler

iMac Intel Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Jul 19, 2008 7:35 AM

60 replies

lefty11

Level 1

0 points

Mar 12, 2009 1:14 PM in response to James Detwiler

I have Parental Controls turned on. I have the "Try to limit acccess to adult sites automatically" option selected. And in the Customize dialog, I have a list of Allowed sites.

The problem that I'm experiencing is that when I try to connect to some secure sites, sometimes Safari complains:

Safari can’t open the page "..." because it couldn’t establish a secure connection to the server “...”.

With Amazon, it partially connects. In the Allow list, I've got all the entries I could add for Amazon, such as http://*.amazon.com, https://*.amazon.com, and (where their secure images seem to come from) https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com.

However, the secure connection breaks down somewhere and I get a partial page with a lot of broken images. It is hard to click on a button when the image for it is missing.

To troubleshoot this problem, I turned off Parental Controls, and Amazon.com works great on a secure connection. Then, to rule out the possibility that my login is corrupt, I created a brand-new user account and it has the same problem with Amazon once I turn on the Parental Controls.

Amazon is just one example of this problem. I see it on other sites when I try to get to a secure page. But in all cases the problem seems to have to do with some component that is not working when a secure connection (HTTPS) and Parental Controls are both involved.

I've tried looking through all the system logs with no luck. I don't see any clues there. I even tried running tcpdump from the terminal to grab all the packet data, but I don't see anything obvious there either.

I like the filtering that Parental Controls provides. So what I really want to do is find a way to solve the conflict between HTTPS and Parental Controls.

The error that Safari gives is similar to the error given when an SSL certificate has expired. So maybe Parental Controls is somehow blocking a certificate from being validated and breaking the validation chain?

Thanks for reading this far,
JDetwiler

I finally got resolution to the problem I am having. I don't know if this will work for everyone else but it did work for me.

+Check the contents of the /Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/ContentFiltering/ folder. If the file httpd.pid is present, delete it. If not, check the permissions of the folder and correct them if necessary. If the permissions are incorrect, running repair permissions would be a good idea in case other locations have been modified to avoid future problems.+

+Then disable Parental Controls on all users and log in as each user and log out. Then re-enable Parental Controls and configure the Parental Controls preferences.+

+If the issue persists, check the system.log for a fresh occurrence of the above errors and check the /Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/ContentFiltering/ folder again.+

What worked for me is deleting the httpd.pid file and then disabling parental controls on all accounts, logging in as each user and logging out. Then reenabling the parental controls for each user.

Hope this is helpful to others!!!

Message was edited by: Host.

Oct 20, 2008 6:44 AM in response to James Detwiler

Still doesn't solve the overall issue... Safari seems to be working ok since the 007 security update... Firefox still don't work with some web content...

Oct 20, 2008 3:17 PM in response to lefty11

this fix worked for me, partially. there was no httpd.pid to delete for me; I did repair permissions, disable parental controls, log out and in to each account, then re-enable controls.

the overall access to https sites is working-- log in at the bank, at starbucks, at yahoo, etc.

specific tasks on some sites, like pressing certain buttons in yahoo mail, does not work. perhaps that's a java issue?

tonyfar

Level 1

0 points

Oct 21, 2008 11:58 PM in response to lefty11

Tried this - but didn't solve the problem.

Ended up installing Firefox - it turned out that Firefox seems to obey the Apple parental controls when it comes to web site access, but allows this to work (So the problem is with Safari, not parental controls).

Oct 22, 2008 5:35 AM in response to Toast1966

and if you disable Parental Controls everything works peachy! So still issues there with Firefox...

Oct 29, 2008 3:29 PM in response to lefty11

Didn't work for me unfortunately.
I did a repair permissions using Disk Utility and did the other steps.

Wondering though, what are the permissions for that ContentFiltering folder supposed to be?
At the moment they are:
system: Read & Write
admin: Read & Write
everyone: Read only

Nov 6, 2008 10:15 AM in response to Brian Covalt

I tried the above suggested fix on my son's new MacBook. It didn't work. Gmail and Yahoo Mail are also blocked using Firefox. Amazing that Apple doesn't have a fix for this. Part of the reason for my purchase was Parental Controls. Now I discover it has a fatal flaw that makes it essentially unusable.

Nov 8, 2008 12:23 PM in response to Larry Zuckerman

I'd like to amend my previous post and say that the suggested fix above did in fact work. Make sure that you look in the library of the user who is subject to the parental controls to eliminate the file, not in the library of the hard drive. Then log out of parental controls, reboot, and try accessing secure sites like Gmail. If successful, go back in and turn on parental controls and access the sites again. Then reboot. It worked for me.

Nov 13, 2008 12:50 PM in response to Toast1966

Firefox 3.04 still doesn't work. However Opera is ok along with Safari so the 007 security update seams to have fixed my issues except with Firefox...

Nov 13, 2008 4:26 PM in response to Toast1966

I'm still having this issue after the update and these other suggestions.

Thanks!

Nov 24, 2008 2:06 PM in response to James Detwiler

I'm also still having this problem, even after applying the suggestions.

Repairing privileges did add write privileges to the group on the /Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/ContentFiltering/ folder, but when I reboot, it reverts back. The owner is root and the group is admin.

Any further suggestions? This indeed makes parental controls useless for web activity.

Nov 30, 2008 9:08 AM in response to James Detwiler

I belive that this is all a matter of certificates, not logs. For example: I use firefox (sometimes). Whenever I reach a unreachable website, It sometimes lets me make a fake certificate for the site, then I can reach the site, but only in firefox.

So I belive that safari is not excepting certificates from sites, unless someone knows how to add them to safari.

barhydtk

Level 1

0 points

Dec 6, 2008 6:56 PM in response to lefty11

I tried every step laid out here. Nothing changed. APPLE!!!!!! Please HELP US!

Seriously, has anyone got any idea how to get in touch with Apple about this? I have a 12 year old who I cannot let surf the web unsupervised, but he needs access to other sites.

I am going to have to put him back on our old Windows XP machine. At least there the parental controls keep him safe.

This is really unacceptable. Apple, you must help parents to protect our children!

Dec 8, 2008 2:49 PM in response to barhydtk

Try going into parental control and click on the "content" control. There is a way to enter web sites that you want exempted from the web filter. Put in www.Gmail.com, www.AOL.com, etc., and your son will be able to access Webmail and other content from those sites. Put in www.youtube.com for same thing.

As your son bumps into sites he can't enter, you can add them. It ain't perfect but at least you will have control over where he can go within the sites that Apple prohibits.

Dec 30, 2008 7:15 AM in response to Larry Zuckerman

Just giving this a bump as I'm having the same problem. I have found several threads that properly address and analyze this problem, but cannot find a resolution short of buying a third party parental control app. Please fix Apple! What good are built in OS X parental controls if basic web browsing cannot happen?

BTW - I am getting https errors on basic sites like Google Mail and when the child account tries to go to aim.com to get a free aim screen name.

Secure Connections and Parental Controls