Firefox ignores Vista’s parental controls, allows porn
If you are using Vista and have young kids around then we recommend fiddling around with parental controls to block certain websites and/or media content but if you want it to be blocked you had better make sure you are using IE7 instead of Firefox.
That’s right, when it comes to Firefox on Vista, it will not block the sites you have set to be. It will happily allow everything to be loaded. So if little “Jimmy†wants to look up nude pictures of his favorite actress, he will be able to do so using Firefox.
This is a serious problem for those who like parental controls enabled because Firefox just seems to not care. Yes, Mozilla is aware of the problem and is working on a fix but don’t count on the latest version of Firefox (2.0.4) to fix the issue because it doesn’t.
If you’re looking for something a little more robust that Vista’s parental controls you just might want to head on over to K9 Web Protection (Vista is supported) and best of all, it’s free to home users. Firefox might be able to ignore the settings in Parental Controls but it will not ignore any settings in K9.
How odd, is it now up to IE7 to protect your kids online? I shutter at that thought. Keep using Firefox but install K9 to supplement Vista’s parental settings when those should fail.
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June 4th, 2007
Extremly suggestive and incorrect.
HTTP get and post commands are intercepted by windows Vista and in case of a block website a special page is shown even when using Firefox.
The only thing firefox has not implemented is the blocking of all filedownload setting of Vista parental controls.
A setting that if Vista were to control it on a lower lever would make it impossible for most applications to download updates. Therefore this setting is accessible for other applicatons trough a documented Vista API call but firefox is just not using it and downloads files independant of this setting.
June 8th, 2007
[...] Gebruikers van Vista’s ‘ouderlijk toezicht’-functie kunnen overstappen op Internet Explorer 7 of aanvullende filtersoftware aanschaffen of downloaden, zo adviseert het blog. [...]
July 6th, 2007
It works fine – I’m using it right now. It Vista blocks sites in Firefox, just not downloads (which doesn’t really matter, because you have to go to a site to get a download (even if someone gets by that, Vista logs EVERY site firefox goes to, even downloads).
September 7th, 2007
[...] Gebruikers van Vista’s ‘ouderlijk toezicht’-functie kunnen overstappen op Internet Explorer 7 of aanvullende filtersoftware aanschaffen of downloaden, zo adviseert het blog. [...]
March 10th, 2008
Parental controls are stupid. Everyone should be able to view everything they want with no oversight.
May 19th, 2008
Schlaffer – K9 works great and I’m glad to see it get some deserved notice – even if just a brief mention. There seem to be some strong counter-claims here in the comments section. I hope you post an Update if you hope to remain credible. How about Opera? What does it do or not do?
OmegaWolf747 – How old are you? Are you a parent? If you are, I fear for your children, their classmates, and future co-workers and bosses.
August 11th, 2008
January 21st, 2009
shutter at the thought?
uhm, how does that work?