Safari Simple Finder Parental Control

I set up a Simple Finder type account for my son on my iMac. Tried to configure Safari but couldn't get anywhere as:
a) when I launched Safari, it appeared without any windows open
b) nothing happens when I select 'New Window' from the file menu in Safari
c) when I select 'New Tab' a window appear comprising just the tool bar, URL text box and a whole lot of 'brushed steel'
Safari preferences have been set correctly (even selected and deselected partental controls to see if anything happened but no luck)
Any ideas on what I can do to fix this?
Thanks
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I ran disk utility and repaired the permissions--is that similar to what you suggest?
When I did a erase-and-install of Leopard, I assume that it ran through a disk inspection and repair routine. But perhaps something more is needed.

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Simple Finder/Parental Controls Problem

I recently did an erase and install on my eMac and am now having problems with Simple Finder and Parental Controls.
I have an account set up for my daughter and I want to have Simple Finder running with about a half dozen or so applications for her to use. Prior to the erase-and-install, I had this set up and running fine. But now, even though I select all the programs I want under the Parental Controls preferences, only three show up (Safari, Dictionary, and TextEdit).
I tried deleting and re-creating the account, repairing permissions, turning around twice and clicking my heels together, etc. with no success.
Any ideas? Thanks!

I ran disk utility and repaired the permissions--is that similar to what you suggest?
When I did a erase-and-install of Leopard, I assume that it ran through a disk inspection and repair routine. But perhaps something more is needed.

Approved applications not showing up in simple finder (parental controls)

I set up a limited access account for my son and turned on the simple finder option. I went through and selected the programs that I want him to have access to. However, not all the selected applications show up in the simple finder of the limited account. A few programs that were downloaded (a simple paint like program and a word processing program) don't show up, and I can't figure out how to get my son access to these short of turning off the simple finder. Any suggestions?
Thanks!

I'm not sure what the answer to this would be, because I don't use the Simple Finder mode much. However, you may have to specify in the Parental Controls preferences exactly which applications you want on his account. For example, instead of taking off some applications, add on the paint application and such. Post back here if you need more details or if that doesn't work. Another thing you could always do is to copy an application over your account into his, although I'm not entirely sure how you could do that. Hope this helps.

Another Parental Control Bug

To start with, these sites worked fine before the upgrade.
Both of my kids enjoy the webkinz website ( for what reason I do not know!!!) but when one clicks logon it works fine. The other one get's blocked, even though it's been permitted in parental controls, it says it's been blocked. I tried adding it onto his bookmark bar again and again and though I was able to book mark it, it still restricted access to it. I logged out, logged in, tried everything I could think of ( and I'm a pretty advanced user) and even added the site to his permitted sites list under my logon via parental controls.
Any other thoughts?

Same exact effect here. I went so far as to add the IP addresses individually to a bookmark in case that would help. I got logged in, but then the page popped up with just the background and no content.
Tried it again, and went back to the 'this url not authorized'
If you're not careful, you can get into an infinite loop of authorizing. I got stubborn and 'authorized' the same page over and over for about 15 tries and still no fix.
What's worse is when it blows up is hit or miss. Sometimes when clicking the logon button it'll go to the logon screen, but after entering the name and password will say the servers at webkinz are broken
Worked fine in Tiger Safari with full parental controls on.

Parental Control accounts with Simple Finder won't log out

Since upgrading to Snow Leopard, my children cannot logout. The accounts use Simple Finder and have Parental Controls set. To log out, we must Force Quit Finder. How do I fix this? Also, empty Trash does not empty the trash.

enable full finder. go to home/library/preferences and delete the files com.apple.dock.plist and com.apple.finder.plist. then control-option click on finder in the dock and choose 'relaunch'. then start Activity Monitor ((it's in /Applications/Utilities) and force-quit Dock. switch back to simple finder and see if it works better now.

Safari has stopped working properly since upgrading to Mountain Lion. Have parental controls in place and it will not add websites. Also short cuts at top of tabs now all messed up!

Since upgrading to mountain lion the other day (from lion) safari has not been working properly. I have parental controls in place but seem unable to add new web pages to allowed list - wasn't expecting to have to anyway - these are webpages that were working perfectly well on safari prior to upgrade. Also the shortcuts above the tabs on safari are all now messed up.
Any advice on how to fix - I am not a computer expert so keep it simple please!
In the meantime I am having to use Firefox.
Thanks
Andrew

Since upgrading to mountain lion the other day (from lion) safari has not been working properly. I have parental controls in place but seem unable to add new web pages to allowed list - wasn't expecting to have to anyway - these are webpages that were working perfectly well on safari prior to upgrade. Also the shortcuts above the tabs on safari are all now messed up.
Any advice on how to fix - I am not a computer expert so keep it simple please!
In the meantime I am having to use Firefox.
Thanks
Andrew

IMac...Safari not working when parental controls enabled, even when no safari or application restrictions have been set.

I woke up one morning to find that Safari could only open webpages on the administrator account.
The other accounts had parental controls enabled. However, not all of them even had any restrictions for using applications or Safari content. When I totally disabled parental controls, these other accounts could get access the internet through safari. When I enabled them (without setting up any paramters), Again Safari could not open any web pages. I tried reseting also.
Has anyone had this issue or have an idea of what I need to do to fix it? Thanks!

I had the same problem, Safari would not open at all in the accounts that had parent controls enabled. I resolved this by going into the admin account and making a copy of safari then pasting it into the library folders as well as the application folders. You can also paste a copy of safari into the other user accounts (desktop) from the admin account. Once that is done, open the parent controls system (check the applications to allow) Internet tab then check safari. Hope that works for you

Parental Controls in Safari 10.5.2 Stops Itune's Store Access

Well I have spent several hours trying to correct a problem that seems to have started when I started to use the built in Parental Controls of Mac OS 10.5.2 on my son's new MacBook! All other software and internet access worked, yet his Itunes could not connect to the Itunes store. I would get error mesages -50 and -4. Interestingly enough, if you clicked on an artist or album in his library, you could get in "the back door" as it would take you to that artists page within the Itunes Store. I left parental controls within Itunes were turned off.
I contacted Apple Support and together we deleted preferences, Itunes itself and reinstalled (with restarts) to no avail. We used the disk utilities and repaired etc, yet ultimately the problem remained and he directed me here to the forums after giving up.
Then I turned off Parental Controls within Safari and restarted (it might work without the restart yet I did so just in case), PRESTO!! Itunes opens to the Itunes Store.
This would imply to me that there is a bug in the Mac OS Parental Controls. Has anyone else had this problem and has Apple announced when a fix date is coming?
I bought my son's MacBook BECAUSE of the Parental Controls built in, yet Itunes sort of goes hand in hand with kids so to me, this is a big problem....

I also posted this elsewhere in Discussions, but if this helps some other folks out, then the duplication is worth it!
==============
I also spent about 2 hours with Apple Tech Support today on this issue. The only workaround I could find was to DISABLE parental controls.
In the iTunes/Store thread in Discussions, there was a link to give Apple feedback on this issue. Here is the link to the feedback page; to get this fixed, I think Apple has to really hear from us. Maybe this is a place to give that kind of feedback:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
Also, having parental controls enables also caused access problems for my child at Webkinz and a school-controlled email account. A thread elsewhere in Discussions listed the IP addresses for Webkinz (also on Webkinz help page here:
http://www.webkinz.com/faq/c.html#18
After going through the thread, here are all the IPs (for your convenience):
66.48.69.98
66.48.69.99
66.48.69.102
66.48.69.104
66.48.69.123
66.48.83.160
66.48.83.161
66.48.83.162
66.48.83.163
66.48.83.164
66.48.83.165
also, add 106, 116, and 117.
66.48.69.118
66.48.69.124
66.48.83.211
I'm glad to hear you heard they are working on it; today's call told me they were just "monitoring" the issue.

Parental Controls for Safari

Does anyone know of an effective parental control for OX 10.3 for Safari to not allow my teens on inappropriate web sites?

I can't remember what we did for our child in Panther but what happens when you go to User Accounts in System Preferences and click on Limitations for a User other than the Admin? I know that we were able to create a User Account with more limited access in 10.3.9 for our young child.
We're about to test out KidsBrowser (because of its graphical interface for young kids) but the same company makes CutX for Safari for teens. (More info at company's site here and you can download a trial version.) CutX will allow you to limit objectionable websites (based on certain keywords and URLs) but it doesn't help with other critical children's internet safety issues such as email and especially chat access and transmission of personal information.
You can also look at What's New in TigerFamily Controls which has many more parental control options. You can even enable parental controls from within Safari and limit email access by specific address in the User Preferances pane.
(Just in case you haven't checked them out already, there's more information about the issue in general at GetNetWise (including information on internet safety products) and NetSmartz.
I don't envy you - it's a lot simpler doing this for our younger-aged children.
Good luck!

Safari Parental Controls

Hey Folks - could use some help here... I can't seem to find anyone with the same problem.
I've created a restricted account for my son and understand I must login as him to create bookmarks in his safari browser to websites that I will allow him to visit.
The problem is when I open the browser & try to add a site by entering my admin username & password - nothing happens. Also, when I try to open his bookmarks & type in my admin name & password - it doens't do a thing... but if I hit cancel instead of trying to login - it opens the bookmarks window but I still can't add sites.
Any ideas out there?
Thanks so much in advance.
Mike
P.S. I've tried creating a new account & also got rid of all safari preferences & settings.

Mike,
This is, in my opinion, quite a significant problem with Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.4.
I handle IT for a school over here in Scotland. The problem with Safari Parental Controls appeared yesterday (Friday). I spent the whole day working on it with no result at all. However, i have some facts about it that i have passed on to Apple for further investigation.
The issue affects both PPC and Intel versions of 10.4.11. it does NOT affect 10.5.7.
I confirmed my results on 10 different Macs. Test the following for me and post results...
1. Create a new user on your Mac. Make that user a Managed one.
2. Enable the Safari Parental Controls.
3. Log in to the account you have just created.
4. Try to visit a site that is not in the bookmarks.
5. Instead of typing in Admin credentials, when prompted, simply click Cancel.
What happens?
6. Now, try it again with proper admin credentials entered and click on OK
What happens?
Thanks for your help.

Do Apple have any plans to include Parental controls within Safari

I was wondering if Apple have any plans to include parental controls withing Safari on the iPad going forward.
It would be particularly useful if you could create a whitelist of websites that could be accessed without a PIN, and then beyond that you would need to enter your PIN to get to any websites not on the white list.
So many kids games have click through's to YouTube videos, and they access YouTube via Safari rather than using the YouTube app so disabling the YouTube app doesn't help, and disabling Safari is overkill.
Anyone heard anything?
Cheers,
Jocky

Thanks OM. For what it's worth my son is only 5 so he's not really looking for mischief online quite yet - let alone hack past barriers I put up (I'm an IT security professional so he nights find he has a bigger challenge against his Dad than most kids when he gets a bit older / more inquisitive anyway ;)) . It's more to stop game click-throughs onto YouTube where he could suddenly find himself seeing something he can't 'unsee'.
I've just disabled Safari for now and left my thoughts and suggestions with Apple via their feedback page :)
Cheers,
Jocky

Safari disappears when I set parental controls

I have set up accounts for my children with parental controls but the accounts do not have access to Safari. I have checked the Safari box in preferences but a big question mark appears where the icon should be. Can you help?

This article may help > Mac OS X v10.5, 10.6: About the Parental Controls Internet content filter

Leopard's Safari parental controls should have kept Tiger's approach

Parental controls for Safari in Leopard do not work as well as Tiger's. Tiger had the option to allow only sites that are bookmarked. Now you have to add them in the parental control's dialog. But more annoying and worst behavior is that you must approve each variation of a domain. Tiger would allow you to bookmark a site such as:
www.apple.com
and subdomains would automatically be approved such as:
support.apple.com
forums.apple.com
But now you have to approve each sub domain and each variation on the URL for the approved domain. It would be much easier and more effective to control if you allow domain level approval and re-add the option in the Parental Controls dialog to allow only the bookmarked sites again.
Any ideas on how to get around this or make it behave more like Tiger.

Actually, you can still use Safari controls just like Tiger-- dragging sites to the bookmarks bar requests admin approval and then adds them to the bookmarks bar, as well as the user's whitelist for all browsers. Also, the domains/subdomains behavior you mention is present in Leopard. When I add http://pbskids.org to the whitelist, all addresses under http://pbskids.org/ are allowed.

Parental controls bug with 10.6.4 and Safari 5?

When Safari is locked in Parental Controls it only opens approved sites. If a user tries to go to a non-approved site a dialog appears allowing an admin to add the site. If the admin authorizes ongoing use, the site should be added to the Safari bookmarks bar.
That's not working any more. The site is not added. THe Admin has to drag the url to the bookmarks bar and reauthenticate. If the admin does not do this the authorization will not stick.
Anyone else see this?

Hi Carolyn. Is there any special reason repairing permissions would work for this? I stopped doing that years ago since I never had it fix anything. (OS X Permissions have deep and seemingly intractable problems, but the repair function doesn't seem to help.)
Thanks for the OpenDNS tip. I have used them in the past. Their new family filter is a good feature, but it's just a packaged version of their standard filtering (and it will have the same problem with local address drift as their standard feature - OpenDNS fails when your public IP address changes, you need to run a DNS updater). I need finer grained control than OpenDNS offers.
Apple seems to break Parental Controls with abandon. Sometimes I think the engineers hate PC.

Safari, Secure connection to sites, and Parental Control

I'm setting up Safari for a child, and have Parental Controls enabled and am customizing the list of sites that can be visited. I'm allowing Netflix.com and have multiple http and https Netflix URL's allowed. However, when I test accessing this site, Safari gives an error stating that it cannot establish a "secure connection".
The same computer, with a different account, can access the same URL without the error. My assumption would be that since I specifically allowed several Netflix.com URL's, that this would work just fine. By granting specific access, you are bypassing Parental Controls in a controlled way.
What's causing this to not work?
Thanks for your help.

Netflix only provides HTTPS when loggin in or visting the main site, not for the content or it would have to encrpyt the video stream (expensive).
It also sends one to another site (with another name "movies.netflix.com" here) to view the content, perhaps you have to access the account from another machine, grab the URL it directs you too and enter that into Parental Controls.
Silverlight also has to be updated, check your Flash too.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/
I did see the thread about using the IP address for HTTPS sites, but wouldn't there be a large number of IP addresses associated with a Netflix type of site due to all of the streaming video feeds available?
If that wouldn't be a problem, does anyone know how to determine the IP address of Netflix?
The video streams are not encrypted, and IP addresses are just the physical buildings of the servers themselves, the buisness name (URL) can change locations and that's what the Domain Name Server is used for to resolve those IP numbers for you in case they do change.
Netflix log in and content delivery have different IP addresses, the content delivery may use IP's of servers closer to your location, so it would not assist you for me to give those out.
You can install Firefox web browser and a add-on called FlagFox, which displays a little country flag in the URL address bar of each website you visit which you can right click and "Copy IP" if you so need it.
I don't advise using the IP, as that can change, use the URL so the Domain Name Server of your ISP can provide the correct IP address so your comptuer can connect.
Also Firefox has more add-ons for control and a nearly completely customizable web browser that may be a better choice for children/special needs (big buttons, type etc) than Safari.
There is Public Fox which can lock down certain aspects of the browser (prevent downloads for instance or changing things.)
Theme Font & Size Changer which can enlarge the type of Firefox itself, there is NoSquint which can auto-zoom all web pages etc.
There are Firefox Personas and Themes that can dress up or "childize" the browser so it's more fun for children.

Safari Simple Finder Parental Control

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