Despite parental controls, a journalist manages to access pornographic content on Safari, how to protect your children

Parental control tools are supposed to protect young people from inappropriate content. But a flaw in Apple’s system allowed a journalist to override these restrictions.

Parental controls are a valuable tool for parents who want to protect their children from offensive or illegal content on the Internet. However, a journalist from Wall Street Journal has managed to circumvent the restrictions put in place by Apple Screen Time to access pornographic, violent or drug-promoting sites on the Apple brand’s browser, Safari.

This security flaw, known since 2020, but not corrected by Apple despite reports, is enough to seriously call into question the desire for exclusivity desired by the Cupertino company for this parental control tool integrated into its devices.

What is Apple Screen Time that leaked pornographic content to Safari?

Apple Screen Time, also known to the French as “Temps d’screen”, allows parents to filter the content accessible on their children’s iOS/iPadOS devices. By setting restrictions on applications, purchases or web browsing, this system aims to create a safe and age-appropriate environment for users. However, Joanna Stern of Wall Street Journal discovered a simple way to bypass these guardrails.

By typing a specific character string into Safari’s address bar, she was able to freely browse pornographic, violent, and illegal drug sites, despite having Screen Time restrictions enabled. This security flaw had been reported several times to Apple by researchers since 2020, without success, as we can read on Apple’s community sites. A visibly exasperated user deplores in April 2024:

Apple, you need to fix this problem with screen time. My children’s boundaries keep clearing, I keep resetting them and they are not updating on their phone. I tried doing them on my account and on their individual phones. I have tried several times, and it continues.
PLEASE FIX THE SCREEN TIME GLITCH!!!

Parents everywhere need to control their children’s screen and app time! Please !!!!

What Apple is doing to fix the problem and advice for parents

Following the revelations of Wall Street JournalApple has acknowledged the existence of this bug linked to “ an underlying web technology protocol for developers “. A fix will be included in the next software update, iOS 18. The brand also says it wants to improve its process for receiving and transmitting bug reports.

Despite these upcoming fixes, parents remain concerned about the many other issues affecting Screen Time: broken app limits, inaccurate or incomplete usage tracking, missing permission requests, and more. Apple claims to have fixed some of these issues in iOS 17.5, but many users are still complaining.

While waiting for lasting improvements, what can parents do?
The first thing to do is to make your child aware of the dangers online and promote ethical and responsible use. The more involved your child is, the more he will respect the rules you have set for him.

Next, actively monitor their digital activity and browsing history. Despite the limits that some social media giants like TikTok are trying to establish, adults and children alike are quickly caught up in “scrolling”, this mania for scrolling through content on a screen without seeing the time pass.

Apply enhanced restrictions to the family Wi-Fi router and install additional parental controls on each device or app. It’s tedious, but necessary to make browsing safe for your children. Finally, favor offline and family activities to reduce screen time, the best parental control undoubtedly remains that which parents exercise on their children, the tools coming as secondary support.

Sources: Apple, The Wall Street Journal