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Parental Controls bug in Mountain Lion 10.8.2

For years I've used Parental Controls, not to restrict my daughter's web content, but to limit her time on the computer. But tonight I upgraded Mountain Lion from 10.8.1 to 10.8.2 and something broke.


Suddenly every secure web page she tries to access (to include google, gmail, amazon, etc.) fails. It says "Parental controls restricts access to secure websites".


A little hunting around turned up the following Apple Knowledge Base article: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2900 that says "https note: For websites that use SSL encryption (the URL will usually begin with https), the Internet content filter is unable to examine the encrypted content of the page. For this reason, encrypted websites must be explicitly allowed using the Always Allow list. Encrypted websites that are not on the Always Allow list will be blocked by the automatic Internet content filter."


I understand that logic however that should NOT apply to me since I'm not trying to automatically restrict her adult web content or create allowed/blocked site lists, etc. She has *unrestricted* web site access, so the Internet content filter shouldn't even be in play here.


Just to get this up and running, I did type the Admin account and password in at the prompt to let her gain access to the web pages. However that did not work. Even though it said it would now allow access - it did not.


I also tried going into Parental Controls, turning ON web site filtering, going into Custom, and adding in approved secure web sites (google, etc.) Even *that* did not work.


Everything was great until 10.8.2 came along but now her account is for all intents and purposes unusable.


Help? And thanks.

MacBook, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), iPod touch 2nd gen 16GB, iPad 1st gen 3G 16GB

Posted on Sep 20, 2012 11:37 PM

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186 replies

Sep 23, 2012 7:30 AM in response to araym

Parenal controls have been broken on both my daughters MB Airs since I upgraded them to Mountain Lion (10.8). Originally the issue was some sites such as Mac App Store. The TCP/IP stack would block resulting in all Internet connections failing (iMessage for example would disconnect) whilst Mac App Store was running. See this discussion


jbhutchhttps://discussions.apple.com/thread/4152486?answerId=19706992022#19706992022&ac_cid=tw123456#19706992


The Mac App Store problem is fixed in 10.8.2 and is called out it the release notes. Unfortunately now you cannot connect to any https URL with parental controls enabled period. Even enabling Full Access for browsing does not work. Every site that uses SSL and every app that uses SSL except the Mac App Store does not work!


I can forgive a bug in the initial release (10.8) and can even understand it not making the bar for the first point release (10.8.1) but then totally busting key functionality (from a parents POV) in the second point release (10.8.2) is plain bad. Does Apple even test this functionality! With kids back in school parents really need working parental controls.

Sep 24, 2012 3:53 AM in response to stevereed

Another one here having parental control issues. I have now turned off all parental controls in both accounts but it has rendered everything useless. Despite adding the website (even though I Shouldn't need to with pc deactivated) I cannot access anything. I have just tried using google earth, bizarrely the same thing happens.



Thoroughly unimpressed with Apple's recent upgrades.😠

Sep 24, 2012 4:21 AM in response to Chamb0790

I'm also having this problem after upgrading my two teenage daughters' macs to 10.8.2. I forwarded a link to this thread to a colleague who went to high school with Craig Federighi, Sr. VP of Mac OS at Apple, and asked him to please forward the email for visibility to Craig. Hope it will help get a quicker solution to this... I've also had to completely disable parental controls for the moment.

Sep 24, 2012 5:08 AM in response to araym

Does the problem persist for others if Parental Controls is disabled? I have done this but to know avail.


If I attempt to use the search facility on Google Earth, it asks me to add the website (even though parental controls is disabled 😕). So I add it and it repeats the same message, rendering the app useless. And please don't suggest using Maps on the iPad instead... 😢


The web address it's asking to add is

https://tools.google.com

Sep 24, 2012 5:24 AM in response to araym

Must say I am very disappointed with the parental controls under 10.8.2. Each time my son accesses a school or university secure site, the box pops up, I allow the site, and it pops up again, a never ending loop process! Launching mail connected to a secure exchange has the same problem, the pop-up box appears and it never gets resolved even after you allowed access.


What is wrong? It was fine in 10.8.1, although youtube site was blank and access to apps was disallowed. Does Apple not test parental controls before release?


I have now disabled parental controls altogether as giving him unlimited web access with parental controls does not solve the problem either.

Sep 24, 2012 5:27 AM in response to Chamb0790

I resolved the problem for the moment by having each of my daughters log into her account, and then I authenticated as the administrator and unchecked the "[ ] Enable Parental Controls" checkbox on the main panel that you see when clicking on the user account in the list. Then, after a restart (I had to restart for the change to take effect), when each of them logged into her account again, the alerts stopped appearing (but of course, the result is that there is no parental controls at all in effect).

Parental Controls bug in Mountain Lion 10.8.2

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