Apple is fixing a years-old parental control bug that lets kids avoid web filters

By Wes Davis , a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

For parents, it can feel like a no-brainer to let their kids have an iPad thanks to its built-in parental control feature, Screen Time. But the system is also undeniably buggy, as most parents will attest. Now, Apple is fixing one of the software’s worst bugs — an apparently obscure one that would let kids see the worst parts of the internet despite settings to stop that, reports Joanna Stern for The Wall Street Journal.

The bug goes like this: kids can circumvent content restrictions by entering a specific string of characters into Safari’s browser bar. Security researchers Andreas Jägersberger and Ro Achterberg reported this bug twice in 2021 and, both times, were told that it wasn’t a security flaw, Stern writes. She also notes that it doesn’t appear as though this particular bug has seen widespread use.

The researchers were apparently told repeatedly over three years that it wasn’t a security problem and were referred to Apple’s feedback tool for software bugs. But after they contacted Stern to report their findings and their struggle with Apple, the company told her there was a fix coming in the next iOS software update. Stern writes that the company “maintains the flaw was a software issue, not a security vulnerability.” Well. At least it’s being fixed.

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