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araym Author

Level 1

11 points

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

186 replies

Király

Level 6

10,017 points

Oct 2, 2012 4:12 PM in response to AdeleS

Well, lo and behold, I actually fixed it. This is what I did:

Turn off parental controls for all accounts
Make a new user account
turn on parental controls only for the new account, set web browsing to unrestricted
log in to the new account
log out of the new account
delete the new account
Turn parental controls back on for the accounts that needed them
Log in to the managed accounts and see if browsing now works

Voila! It works! Hopefully it will work for some of you too.

Oct 2, 2012 5:23 PM in response to Király

Kiraly,

You rock! Just updated to the new OS and discovered the same problem everyone else has stated. Thank you for the work around - saved major homework headaches to night. Now, if Apple would just fix the bug parents everywhere would be much happier.

I wonder if we would have had the same problems if we had turned off parental controls before the update?

Thank you!

Oct 2, 2012 11:15 PM in response to Király

@Kiraly

I've tried... did not work. As a matter of facts, by doing this, only few web sites can be accessed. For most of them (Apple, Google, ...) I get a masseage saying that Safari cannot connect to the web. No more pop-ups, but no web either...

Oct 3, 2012 5:10 AM in response to Weborican

My problems started with ML 10.8. I upgraded to 10.8.1 a few weeks ago, hoping the problem had been addressed, but I still lacked access to certain sites when PC was enabled. I decided not to upgrade to 10.8.2 after I read all the problems encountered with that version.

I don't want some quick fix, I want an operating system that has working parental controls! Is that too much to ask?

Horsman

Level 1

0 points

Oct 3, 2012 6:02 AM in response to Horsman

I've tried a number of work-arounds as suggested on this thread but none work. The only thing that stops the security warnings is deleting the account, creating it again and allowing unrestricted web access in parental controls.

The main problem for me comes from url references that are hidden from the user. For instance http://www.google.co.uk pops up a security warning for multiple https urls that I've not tried to get to - they are linked to in the site code. The the amount of similar hidden links (trackers, advertisers, facebook 'like' button links ......) makes the whole thing unusable.

Here's a screenshot example (even opening the Skitch application to take the screenshot caused two https warnings!):

Oct 3, 2012 8:58 AM in response to araym

SOLUTION

Here is the solution that worked for me. I have done it on 4 different Macs and it has worked everytime. The problem appears to have been around for several years and keeps popping back up with various updates to OS/X. There seems to be some issue created when you turn on Time Limits under the Bedtime section which creates the problem. You need remove those settings and then disable the logging that is done for the family controls. Here is how to do it:

1: Logon as a user with administrator permissions.

2: Open the Parental Controls settings for the user. Go to the Time Limits section. Remove any check boxes and settings under the Bedtime section such as School Nights or Weekends.

3: Run the Terminal app. Enter the following line in the terminal app. Make sure you replace username with the actual username of the user you are trying to fix. It will probably ask you for a password which is your password as administrator.

/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -mcxset /users/username com.apple.familycontrols.logging web always -bool false

4: Logout and test the user

jsalino

Level 1

7 points

Oct 3, 2012 12:05 PM in response to MaxPowerBE

MaxPowerBE I have tried your SOLUTION on numerous macs and I'm sorry but it doesn't really fix anything.

There are at least 7 documented bugs for parental controls in this thread and all of them return after a reboot.

bedtime vs hour allotment conflict

secureweb access issues even if website control is deselcted

multiple versions of same program appearing in app control

etcetera

if you are reading this thread please take the time to lodge a complaint through the apple web site

the link can be found in several posts in the preceeding pages

Oct 3, 2012 3:57 PM in response to araym

I just posted about this at Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuagans/2012/10/03/first-there-was-apples-mapgate -now-welcome-parentgate/

Hopefully it will spur them to a quicker solution.

Rohit L

Level 1

5 points

Oct 3, 2012 5:35 PM in response to joshuagans

Thanks for bringing some attention to "Parentgate". Hopefully it will help spur Apple to respond.

Cheers,

Oct 4, 2012 8:40 AM in response to araym

It appears this is a problem with Lion also. I enabled Parental Controls, switched on "Try to limit access to adult websites automatically" and am blocked from any website using https.

Oct 4, 2012 1:24 PM in response to devinhedge

Strange... 10.7.5 on my MacBook and no issue with that.

Weborican

Level 1

115 points

Oct 4, 2012 2:00 PM in response to araym

Rejoice:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1600

Oct 4, 2012 2:24 PM in response to Weborican

GREAT! It does seem to work as before! 🙂 thanks... still desappointed that Apple did not tell us offiscially they were working on that... 😟

jsalino

Level 1

7 points

Oct 4, 2012 2:44 PM in response to danykaffee

Can anyone who has installed the update tell the rest of us if the repairs only one issue (secured web) or all the issues as outlined in this thread? Thank you.

Oct 4, 2012 2:51 PM in response to Weborican

I am far from rejoicing. With this, and the endless ways in which Apple has broken my iPhone with IOS6, I'm looking at alternatives.

Parental Controls bug in Mountain Lion 10.8.2