Bypass parental controls

Hah!

Here's a reg file for anybody that wants to try it without messing with the registry editor:
http://otto.homedns.org/iTunes/ParentalControlOff.reg

Just double click it to perform the same change he's describing above.

Don't you have to be a system administrator to edit the registry like this? I just tried it from a limited user account, and I was unable to make the change in regedit.

It's hardly a bypass if you have to be an admin to do it. How many people give their kids admin accounts?

The key that turns it on or off is in HKEY CURRENTUSER. That hive is only the current users hive, every user has their own different settings there. So if you turn it on on one account, it probably won't be turned on for other accounts on the same machine. If they wanted it set globally, that should be done in HKEY LOCALMACHINE.

Admittedly, I'd have to do more testing on it, but it looks like it's a broken first attempt to me.

Im the admin on my comp and im only 15. but this is because i accessed my mums account and changed it myself. lol

As people have pointed out, if you have administrative access to the machine, parental controls can be bypassed. The feature is meant to be used with limited user accounts. For example, a parent can set up a limited account for a child, log in as the child, run iTunes, and lock down parental controls for the child by authenticating as an administrative user.

toonz: Yes, but with this, the child can turn it off without being an admin user. All user accounts, even limited ones, have access to change the HKEY CURRENTUSER hive. They have to, it's their own personal hive. Yes, they can't do it with iTunes, admittedly, but this lets you turn it off without iTunes.

Admittedly, the child would have to know how, but kids are smarter than you think sometimes. 🙂

Hi Otto42,

You are incorrect. Only an admin user can make this change in the registry. You can see this for yourself by following these steps:

1. Create a limited Windows user account.
2. Log into the the limited user account.
3. Turn on parental controls in iTunes.
4. Lock the parental controls with your admin user's name and password.
5. Quit iTunes.
6. Open Regedit and attempt to edit the value.

You will see that regedit does not allow you to make the change.

Regards,
Ethan

Ethan: Thanks for the info, I'll perform that test and find out. It's certainly possible that iTunes is setting the correct permissions on that piece of the registry, I grant you.