Apple has promised to fix a years-old bug in its parental controls that allows children to bypass restrictions and watch adult content online.
The bug, where a child could bypass controls by simply entering a certain nonsensical phrase into Safari’s address bar, was first reported to the company in 2021.
It has languished unfixed and this week a Wall Street Journal report drew attention again to the risk. Now Apple says a fix will arrive in the next iOS update.
In effect, the loophole disables the company’s Screen Time parental control system for Safari, allowing children who should be limited to a blocked version of the web to access whatever they can think of.
Although it appears the bug was not widely exploited, critics say the flaw – and its persistence – is emblematic of the company’s lack of care for parents.
“As a parent who relies heavily on Screen Time to keep my kids safe and keep them from staring at a screen all day, I agree that the entire service is very buggy, seems like an afterthought, and there seem to be loopholes in everything. ” Mark Jardine said., an iOS developer. “And it’s been that way for more than a decade.”
When it launched in 2018, Screen Time was sold as doing double duty: helping parents monitor their children’s device use and helping adults be more aware of how they spend their own time.
In the years since its launch, it is the first group that has come to rely more on the service. They can use it to lock features and apps behind a passcode, limit kids’ use to certain times of day, or just lock them entirely from a phone.
The year after the launch of Screen Time, Apple began to crack down on third-party services that performed the same tasks. The company argued that it was a necessary security approach, since apps that can monitor screen time inherently have the type of access that can also be used for more nefarious purposes. But Apple was criticized on competition grounds.
Five years later, critics argue that that lack of competition has caused Apple to neglect its parental controls. Dan Moren, an Apple blogger, said: “I’ve heard from many other parents who find screen time frustrating and full of loopholes. And this is after Apple started removing third-party parental control apps from its iOS store.”
Apple said: “We take reports of issues related to Screen Time very seriously and have made constant improvements to ensure users have the best experience. Our work is not done and we will continue to make updates in future software versions.”
