Ichat, google talk & parental controls

I need to be able to use ichat while homeschooling my children. But I also just recently had to turn on parental controls on my sons computer to limit the computer time. I found that ichat through bonjour will not work. I thought I had found a solution by signing up for a google talk account. I did all the these steps that WuzzyBoom posted a while back:
You can get GoogleTalk to work if you:
1. disable the parental controls on the desired user account*
2. log into that account*
3. setup the GoogleTalk connection and test.
4. log out of user account
5. log back into the admin account
6. enable parental control again
7. done.
This seemed to work except that when I turned parental controls back on and logged back into his account, there was no list of buddies online, just the chat windows showed up. Not a big deal because he is only allowed to chat with 3 people and we had left the chat windows open so we could chat after putting the parental controls back on. But when he closed his computer for the night, it logged him off of ichat and this morning when i tried to tell him something through iChat it says he is offline and the chat window will not open on his computer.
Has anyone been able to find a solution to not being able to use iChat when parental controls are on?
thanks in advance.

Hi,
I have tested this before in Leopard.
In Leopard (iChat 4.x.x) it is know that the parental Controls Limit iChat to just AIM Logins
I had heard and was convinced I had tested that Jabber worked in Snow Leopard (iChat 5.x.x) when Parental Controls were ON.
Currently I cannot get my Google Account to Login when Parental Controls Is On,
The Help in Lion says this (these two appear in the other order in Snow Leopard but say the same thing)
Pic
This would imply that Jabber as well as Bonjour is Still furned Off.
What is strange is that I run Little Snitch (it tells you ports and IP address of connections) and this says iChatAgent (The support app that does the Login ) is in fact Logging in to Google.
The iChat Preferences loses the option to Enable the Bonjour and Google account.
Nor does the iChat Menu > Accounts allow you to select/Tick Bonjour or Google.
And, of course, they don't appear in the Window Menu.
NOTE
WHen this was done in Leopard (iChat 4) with an AIM name any Buddies that were not allowed did not show Up if you left Parental Controls ON and returned to using your regular Mac User account.
That is to say if you tested with Screen Names and IDs (Accounts) you used in your regular Mac User Account and used those in the "test" account, as I did, then any Buddies not added to the AIM Allowed Buddies (in Parental Controls) restricts the Buddy List when you come back to your regular Mac User Account.
Based on thre Note above I notice that the AIM Account I used in both is restricted to the one Buddy that Is On line that I allowed in Parental Controls (I used an Address Book card and this listed Jabber and AIM Screen Names).
The Google account is uneffected by the fact I entered two Names/IDs via the Address Card pick and one Manually.
I double check things against the 7 step list you gave in the first post.
My "Test" Mac User Account was set up with the Google Account/ID and my AIM Screen Name as it's two Accounts (in addition to Bonjour) before I turned On Parental Controls.
I was in the Admin Mac User Account (my Regular Login) and set Parental Controls.
The Bonjour did not Log in ("known" Issue)
The Google one did not and could not be made to Login from thr Preferences . Account sub option in the iChat Menu or the DOCK Icon. The option to Show Jabber Buddies had also disappeared from the Menu Bar Icon drop down.
I have tried resetting this whilst the Test Mac User Account was Logged in (You have to enter the Admin's Name and password to Set Parental Controls)
I briefly managed to get the Google List to show but it was not restricted.
When I quit iChat and re-launched it the Google option was Off again.
I have spent some time trying different combos but on my Snow Leopard computer I cannot get Google/Jabber to display in any form when using Parental Controls.
10:54 AM Saturday; December 3, 2011
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Similar Messages

IChat breaks with Parental Controls

So I've set up a Macbook for my mother: created an account for her with Simple Finder and Parental Control (as in "control your parents" way ). Then, created a gmail account and set up iChat to use google talk. Everything worked fine until... at some point iChat stopped showing the contact list. She starts iChat - the icon pops up in the Dock, and that's it. Nothing else shows up on the screen. I can see her coming online in my iChat, and I can chat with her - she'll see my messages and my voice/video chat invites, but she herself can't invite anyone, because there's no contact list. Tried everything: Window => Jabber - no luck. The window is just not there.
I've tried to delete all iChat properties and reconfigure it from scratch - impossible in the Simple Finder mode with Parental Controls: iChat simply crashes immediately upon start. The only way to set it up is to disable both Simple Finder and Parental Controls completely - only then I can set up iChat. And after it's set up - turn Simple Finder and Parental Controls back on. It works for some time, and then - BAMM! - again Contact list is gone.
So I've tried the same thing on my MacBook Pro: created a test account, set up the same way I set it up for my mother on her MacBook - with exactly the same effect: iChat breaks after some time. I couldn't find any logic as to why it breaks down, it just stops showing contact list at some point, and it's impossible to reconfigure it with Parental Controls enabled.
***??? So much for the "ease of use"

Is the buddy closed, with ichat in the menu bar click on window and chose the buddy list.

Ichat, Snow Leopard, Parental Controls

Just got my son's new 21.5" iMac and updated to latest Snow Leopard patch. Migrated all user accounts from a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5.8 with no problem.
My son's account has parental controls enabled.
Setting ichat on the new mac for his account was interesting. First, there was no Account Type option available for Jabber or Google Talk. Others were there (incl. AIM). Strange.
I changed his account to Standard type and finally was able to configure the Jabber account for him. Proceeded to test video chat and text chat and it all worked fine.
Now, I proceeded to restore parental controls and now ichat can't get online with the jabber servers. I haven't tested with Bonjour. If this is by design, then it's a poor design.
Anybody else with the same experience?

Opps,
My mistake.
Yes the Parental Controls work on the Basis that you Set iChat up and add any Buddies under supervision.
Then you set the Parental Controls so that unknown Buddies cannot be added to either the Jabber (which will include any GoogleTalk ID used) and also this will stop a further AIM/Apple or Jabber/GoogleTalk Account/Screen Name/Buddy List being set up.
The presumption is you want to know who your child is talking to.
If they could add Buddies or Create a Screen Name you did not know about they could circumvent that.
Most of the major IM services are supposed to have a 13 year age limit on the people who use it.
In practice this cannot be supervised by the Server end.
I think that Apple still has a way to go on iChat and Parental Controls.
The fact you cannot use Bonjour to call your kids for a meal seems at odds with the fact they can still call their Buddies.
9:43 PM Saturday; November 14, 2009
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Why is my iChat Google Talk sending html markup?

I am using iChat on my new computer and it automatically configured Google Talk when I put in my gmail address. Things looked great until I sent a message to a PC user with a Google Talk application - it arrived to him as
<html xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/xhtml-im"><body style="background-color:#fee32f;color:#000000;" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica';font-size: 12px;">i'm on new computer</span></body></html>
instead of just my text - making conversation a little difficult! Is there any way to make sure I'm sending plain text, and lose all the html markup? My text shows up fine when I have Talk open in my gmail browser window, though I see the same thing he was in the transcripts archived in my gmail.

HI,
I have only heard of that in relation to iChat to IQC users.
ICQ was once owned by AIM and formed part of the same "Service"
That is to say it logged in to the same Servers and ICQ names could be added to an AIM Buddy list and vice Versa
ICQ has since been sold off to some Russians and has it;s own servers although can still be "AIM Buddies"
The point is though, that IQC users do not have stylised Balloons or Bubbles for their text Chats and cannot deal with the extra info that is sent.
Basically it is HTML to form the Balloon and colour it and the Font.
I have never seen a Post to say the the PC app called GoogleTalk had this issue
In earlier versions (iChat 4 and 5) there was an Add-on called Chax that could remove the HTML for ICQ chats but it does not work in iChat 6
Google and AIM have both added methods of "Automatically" adding Buddies from the other service to their Buddy lists
I am wondering if the GoogleTalk app has an "ICQ mode" that is enabled.
10:07 PM Friday; July 13, 2012
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 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
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IChat Screen Sharing & Parental Controls

We have iChat 4 and 10.5.6 parental controls working on our granddaughters imac. Normal iChat works fine. We have parental controls set to only allow ichat with us using AIM profiles. Does anyone have any suggestions to help us figure out why we cannot screen share? We get the descriptive error "could not establish connection?"
Message was edited by: nt005

Hi,
Parental Control in Leopard does allow you to set some things for iChat and Mail.
The setting in iChat apply only to the AIM Buddy List (Any Screen name that logs into AIM).
It Disables Bonjour and Jabber form being used so you can not even list contacts listed in the Address Book that have either a Jabber/Googletalk ID or refer to other contacts that are Bonjour Only.
From what you say you have already worked this bit out.
Does Screen Sharing work if Parental Controls Is Off ?
I am not aware that Parental Controls effecting Screen Sharing otherwise.
8:46 PM Friday; April 3, 2009

IChat + Google Talk: shrinks google's buddy icon. Any fix?

I use iChat for google talk. Unfortunately, every time I start up iChat, the buddy icon in iChat overrides the buddy icon on google's servers. iChat's icon must be smaller, because if i go to use google talk via web interface (in gmail, etc.), the buddy icon is very pixalated (as if google is trying to enlarge it).
Any way to stop iChat from overriding google's buddy icon???

Just sent this to the developer of Chax:
Kent,
First let me tell you that Chax is one of the best add on programs out there for the mac. I value your work and appreciate it.
An issues that's been around for a while, and one which I wonder if you can take care of in one of the upcoming releases.
Basically, the problem is using iChat for Google Talk. What happens is that your buddy icon in iChat ends up overwriting the buddy icon you have set on google/gmail/gtalk/etc. This is a problem because iChat's buddy icon is much smaller, pixel wise, and ends up making the icon on any of google's pages look absolutely terrible.
Is there anything you can do to prevent iChat from overriding google's icon, or to have allow iChat to use a larger size icon (probably much more difficult).
There have been many threads about this on apple's discussion forums and on gmail/gtalk google group forums. There is no solution.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

How to enable usage of Jabber (& Google Talk) accounts w/Parental Controls

Hello all,
As someone who just spent a few hours trying to figure out how to get iChat in a Parental Controlled account to work with Jabber (and Google Talk) accounts, and seeing that there were no good solutions posted on these boards earlier, I just wanted to share a workaround which could potentially work for some people.
You can find the solution posted on my wiki: http://wiki.lensovet.net/EnableJabber_accounts_in_iChat_with_Parental_Controlledaccounts
Of course, the usual caveats apply: make sure you have a backup of all your data before you proceed, and I take no responsibility if things go awry. If you have any questions, please post them as replies to this thread.
Good luck! Hope you find this helpful.

Hi,
The reason I ask is that in Snow Leopard you can Add the Jabber/Google account's Buddies to the Allow List and they will work.
In Leopard this cannot be done (The Parental Controls vary in this extent).
In either case Bonjour also does not work.
Can you confirm you can Enable your Bonjour Buddy List (even if you have no other Macs) ?
Some people may find it useful to use to call kids, via Bonjour, for Tea or Dinner but still use other features of the Parental Controls.
7:34 PM Tuesday; November 30, 2010
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IChat AV can't audio chat with Google Talk

I'm using iChat AV 3, and I have enabled my Google Jabber account. My friend is on a PC, and has Google talk. We can IM, but we both can't start a voice chat.
Is there anything we must do to enable voice chats? We both can talk on skype fine, and we both have headsets that work, just iChat/google talk won't let us communicate.
Anyone have a solution? This is only till a universal binary of Skype comes out...
Thanks,
Bryan

Hi Furi0us.Bee,
This page still says it is not possible
http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html
9:25 PM Friday; April 28, 2006

Parental Controls Log Location

I'm migrating a parental controlled computer's data to a new computer. Where is the location of all the logs ie. iChat? Note: they are not in the Documents/iChats folder since parental controls is on.

Since I mentioned I'm migrating all my data, one would assume that these logs are an item I wanted to be migrated also. I know where they are to view them, but where are they located to move them?

Setting parental controls via profile manager

So I've got Lion Server running on an older mac mini. I've setup up accounts on the server for my kids. (they're my guinea pigs!) We have 2 other macs in the house both running Mavericks. I'm able to do a networkin login into the kids' accounts from those client machines with no problem. I'm also storing their home folders on the server and creating "mobile" accounts (I think that's the terminology) on the client machines. I've installed the Trust certificate from the server onto those client machines. I've also installed the group certificate on the client machiens. (most of the profile manager settings I have for the kids are handled in a group called "kids")
Here's the problem: if I try to enforce parental controls on the kids' accounts (such as limiting the time they can be on them, etc) it doesn't work. In fact, after the settings get pushed to the client machines, they (the client machines) often will lock-up or start acting really flaky. A reboot "fixes" that, but the parental controls still won't work.
I've tried this literally dozens of times with the same result. Other changes in profile manager, such as restricting access to certain apps, DOES seem to work. It's mainly just the settings related to parental controls that seem to be the problem.
Am I doing something wrong? Is this stuff supposed to work? Thanks for any help, this is incredibly frustrating!

Unfortunatley I never got this resolved. In fact, it turns out that this is really a bug in how the parental controls work with a "managed" account. All of the other settings that can be managed on OSX server seemed to work just fine in my testing, but the parental controls do not. Or more specifically, the curfew (time limit) settings definitely don't work. It's hard to believe, but apparently this is a use-case Apple never considered. (if you do some googling for parental controls and OSX server you'll find we're not alone)
I don't recall exactly, but if you're trying to determine if changes got pushed to the clients there is something in the profile manager (web UI) that shows "completed tasks" or "active tasks" (or something like that) which should show what was pushed and if it was succssfully received by the client.
Anyway, after all that effort I ended up not using the profile management feature in OSX server at all. My kids accounts are now just plain 'old local accounts. I came to the conclusion (as many others have) that OSX server, at least in a home setting, just isn't worth the effort. It's too bad because if it all worked properly it could be really useful. If you still want to mess around with OSX server you might want to check out some nice youtube videos by a guy named Todd Olthof. He has a bunch of videos on OSX server that are actually geared completely towards the home user.
Good luck!

IChat, Parental Control and Bonjour

Rather than using AIM (and it's slowness), I was hoping to be able to use Bonjour on our internal network (which is firewalled and, obviously, not a threat) to chat/audio conference with our youngest.
I used the parental control to limit his AIM partners to the family but still wanted to allow him to talk on our network in the house. Unfortunately, when I go into iChat via his account the "using Bonjour instant messaging" is grayed out.
I tried turning it on in iChat on his account, going to my admin account and THEN enabling parental control, and trying again but no dice.
Any ideas?
Sure would be nice for home networks to have the option to iChat with everyone at Bonjour vs. AIM speeds (doubly so if you are on dialup!).

hi James,
Well I read this and thought "he can't be right" ?
So I went to test
Enabled Parental Controls and for iChat and Added one AIM/@mac buddy.
Looked for ability to add Bonjur or Jabber accounts but found nothing
Went to log in to that account.
Check to see if Bonjour window was available. Nope.
Checked iChat Preferences >Accounts and could not select Bonjour.
Took off Parental Controls - Appears in iChat, Bonjour and Jabber windows.
Selecting and deselecting Parental Control Logs iChat in and out of AIM.
I must admit to thinking this is a big Opps by Apple
Ralph

Remove Google Talk ID from iChat new account box

Hello,
I recently set up an iChat account with a private email account just to test the software, but I want to delete the account. I have gone into the menu under preferences and deleted the account within iChat. However, whenever I open iChat again, the dialog box to start up a new account still shows my email address under the Google Talk option. As this is a private email address, I don't want this to display when I open iChat. I have deleted the entry from the keychain access, which helped to get rid of the password, but did not get rid of the ID being stored someplace. I have also deleted all of the preference files for ichat from my library folder, as well as everything from the ichat folder under Library/Caches. However, when I start up ichat again, this email still is being stored and pops up in the account setup window.
Can someone please help me figure out where this information is being stored and how to delete it? I have tried setting up a new google talk account, trying to replace it. The new account gets set up, but once I delete it and open ichat again, the original unwanted id is still there.
Thank you very much for any assistance!

Hi,
IF you were starting with the Start Up Screens for iChat you an enter any Info in the AIM (@mac.com/Mobileme options) or Jabber/Google Screens as required as you go.
Those are then seen in iChat > Preferences >Accounts.
Deleting an Accounts/Screen Name here leave the ID used in the Keychain
Deleting the .plist for iChat (Namely com.apple.ichat.AIM.plist) does not stop iChat calling back that info from the Keychain ----- IF ------- you also happen to delete com.apple.ichat.plist at the same time (Forces the Start Up screens to Re-appear) at which point any Keychain info is "recovered".
Solution.
Go to the Applications/Utilities folder and Launch Keychain Access.
Go to the Password section.
Find the relevant entry and double click it.
This will open an Info window for this item
You can click the show Password box and then fill in the Allow Dialogue box to see it.
You can delete just the password.
You could delete the whole entry.
You can use the Access Control Tab to limit it to the app that should use the info. (i.e Mail if it is an email)
As a standard action deleting the account in iChat and then the Keychain references for the password should be enough with then restarting iChat
The first rewrites the iChat .plists that hold any info.
The restart of iChat cannot then access the Keychain info as it does not exist (the account is not in iChat to even ask for it).
One more possible to check.
Certain Email Addresses are also iChat Valid Names.
The Address Book will be read and @mac.com And MobileMe names, as they are Valid AIM names will be placed in the Start Up Screens even if they are not placed in the AIM name spot for IM names in the Card when you start up iChat for the "First Time" (First time includes the double com.apple.ichat.AIM.plist with com.apple.ichat.plist deletions and restart)
<
11:02 PM Thursday; August 11, 2011
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 MacBookPro 2Gb( 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Parental controls blocking ichat?

Hi, I recently made my son's account on our Mac not the Administrator and I made an account to be the new Admin. This is so that I can turn on the parental controls. I made no choices in the parental controls about iChat, I only used the time limit functions and the log functions. However, now that parental controls are enabled, my son's iChat is not working. It shows up as if he has no buddies, online or offline, and if you add a buddy the new buddy shows up under offline and is blocked. Then the buddy disappears. It seems that iChat is blocking him from talking to anyone. How can you fix this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Let me see if I have under stood this.
There were at least two accounts on the computer that were Admin ones.
You son had one of these.
You have now made him a Non-Admin and Managed account through Parental Controls
You have created another Admin Account.
With the New Admin account you set the Parental Controls on your Son's account.
You did not do this from the Original Admin Account ?
If......
Your son was using the original Admin account and you set him up with iChat there it will have been linked to the Address Book.
If you then set him up with a new User account that was Not Admin but copied the Address Book across then you can have issues.
I have seen them if you use the iChat/Mail settings where the original Users Info has been transferred across but the Parental Controls overide things (and vice Versa as iChat is then somewhat unusable in the main Admin account as the Buddy List is effectively blocked).
I have not experimented with having two admin accounts and changing the original (first) account to a Managed one.
I have not tried Timed/schedule settings only either
DO NOT DELETE ANY ACCOUNT.
Do things works again if you set him back to an Admin account ?
10:22 PM Monday; June 2, 2008

Why can't I use the Google talk in ichat?

I have MBA with ichat v 5.
I just downloaded google talk using my gmail account.
Now when I click on ichat and went to click on "I am available"
a new windows appear with my gmail address and password to be typed in. When I type in my pass-word it does not!! The same windows keep reappearing to confirm my pass-word!!
How could get my ichat working?
Any help would be appreciated.

Hi,
That extra lower case l is not the issue. It is the standard message when this happens.
Is port 5223 open in your Modem or router ?
UPnP will be OK for that.
If it is still a problem try deleting com.apple.ichat.Jabber.plist and restarting iChat.
This .plist is in your Home Folder/Library/Preferences which you will have to go to Manually as Spotlight does not look in there.
9:14 PM Monday; October 12, 2009
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

Using video with Google Talk account in iChat

Hello,
Is is possible to use video chat with a Google Talk account in iChat? I am able to tect chat, but cannot seem to connect to video with other (PC) users.
Cheers,
Candice

Hi
Have you got a AIM or .mac account
You can use iChat to talk(video) a PC on AIM, The PC must be using AIM6.1 http://www.aim.com/getaim/win/latestwin.adp?aolp=
Or Skype.
Mac version http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/download/skype/macosx/
PC version http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/download/skype/windows/

Ichat, google talk & parental controls

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