With the recent gamepass price hike we decided to invest in PCs for my kids to be able to game subscription-free.
I finally got them built, set up family safety (which was already set up to a degree because of Xbox stuff). But I'm finding it unacceptably redundant. Here's the things I've noticed:
Blocking all websites except whitelisted does nothing at all. I've checked and double checked everything is set up correctly. It simply doesn't do anything.
Browsing history isn't being logged in the family Safety app. I suspect this is to do with the failure of point #1.
There's no warning that the above features aren't working.
Even if it did work and block websites, it seems it's reliant on my child being signed into the browser. So simply logging out of the browser can bypass restrictions.
Microsoft subscription products are being advertised within Windows to my <10 year old children. Their age is set within the Family Safety features, there's no excuse for this. They don't want a 365 yearly subscription. Go away.
There's no option to blanket block everything and just allow it on a per-application process. I have to go through and manually block/time limit everything.
If I block a program, there's no way of manually allowing it on a one-time basis with admin passcode (if I'm setting something up or fixing something on their profile), there's only the option to unblock completely. So I have to set everything up on a time limit basis and just put the time to 0, so I can add time on to a program if I need to do anything.
These are just the things I've noticed while setting up their profile, very likely the more they use it the more gripes I'll have. Honestly I'd rather they have not bothered, rather than giving parents a false sense of security - at least I'd know where I stand. No wonder governments are stepping in to "protect the children".
Luckily they'll never be on their PC unmonitored, and is right next to my PC.
I find the family settings quite flakey.
I use the time restrictions mostly and it works but it doesn’t. It seems to track time ok but not actually enforce the restrictions. I’ll get requests from my kid to extend the time and I’ll choose 30 min or an hour… 2 hours later, somehow he is still able to play. The instant lock option only seems to show up as an option in the app if you click in and out of a section a couple times.
Honestly while I don’t expect much from MS, I expected better for the family app.
Interesting, I'm experiencing the same things
I'm annoyed at the inconsistency in the alerting when you have 15 minutes left. Sometimes it alerts but other times it randomly does not.
That's mental that it's such an unreliable mess. When it comes to kids and tech you don't want to mess around.
I've worked places where they've even locked down changing desktop background and can only open approved apps - why can't they just convert those restriction into the Family Safety app!
From a multi-trillion dollar company there's no excuse for it to be this bad.
I mean... Are any Parental Controls software actually reliable?
Only reliable thing is to place the computer in a public area/room. Other than that... you, me, kids, we all eventually figured out a way to get around it. Even on the router isn't reliable since the kids will then just hotspot onto their phones or neighbors networks.
Yeah, I mean I expect them to figure out workarounds when they're older, when they've earned access to the dark side of the Internet (j/k)
But they're both still under 10, and it's their first PC. They aren't going to be bypassing anything yet, well anything that works.
Are they browsing in kids mode per https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/learning-center/how-to-set-up-windows-parental-controls ?
All set up correctly, yes. It just simply fails to work.
Interesting, I have this set up on my sons pc and it works. I'll unset it and see if I can break it later today.
Well this is 2 PCs for two kids and neither of them work, looking at the Microsoft support forums reveals it's not isolated to me.
Be careful trying to break it if you rely on it!
I'm not too worried, I can fix anything as long as it wasn't broken in an update. Can you get me build numbers of the OS running on the 2 pcs?
Win+r then type winver.
also edge version if you can. "...", Help, About
Mine doesn't work either. I've worked on it for days.
just to double check - did you sign in first onto the computer, before they did? Found it didn't work on my kids unless I did this
I am curious if you can get this to work. My current problem is that I cannot approve new websites. So my daughter‘s access to the web is restricted to the websites that have been previously approved.
Because I tried to reinstall my son’s in an effort to get it to work he now has unrestricted access to the Internet.. careful
Sounds like when the system was configured, their user account was set up as a local administrator on the machine (which is always going to be the default for the first user that logs into the system after it's built). Once you have established yourself as a local administrator, make sure that you set their user account as just that: a user, and not an administrator.
Good thought but they are not the first account in the machine… I am… then set up users for kids… it worked great until a a few days ago.
Parental controls are always weak. But its really disappointing that windows build in controls to nothing.
I have no easy fix.
I can just say, that for proper working limits you kinda need to roll enterprise management controls. Windows has Local Group Policies (assuming you are on pro or higher; with home these are not available). With GPOs you can for example whitelist/blacklist domains in edge, Firefox and chrome (and most other browsers), you can limit to specific wlan and lan networks, you can limit the device to only run specific apps, you can limit ads, Microsoft cloud content and AI systems, and much, much more. You can even limit incoming files, so that its impossible to, for example, smuggle in Porn with a USB Stick.
Assuming that the kids are not local Administrators, and assuming that the hard drive is encrypted with Bitlocker and the kids don't have access to the recovery key, its also pretty much impossible to bypass these restrictions. (Short of completely wiping and reinstalling the system)
But its also really complicated for the average user to set these GPOs up. They are extremely powerful but intended for system administrators at Businesses and Enterprises. Its expected that you really know what you are doing when setting this up. But if you want to have really hard to bypass and proper limits and controls, this might be your only real option.
Other than that, there are other 3rd party parental control applications, but I don't know how well they work if at all.
Oh and fair warning, if you set this up, depending on how much you limit, your kids might like you a lot less... You can setup some really draconian restrictions with GPOs
I find the time controls work but to extend I seem to have to approve at least three times. Yes it's a bit crap.
When is the last time you tried making a change to allowed sites?
Not for a long time, unless one of the kids wants access an i approve i have-not really set up anything in allowed sites since creation years ago.
Ok - so you might be affected by the problem as well. The only way to see would be to make a change now to allowed sites and see if it processes.
For me the "allowed sites" has been totally non-functional for at least the past week. Changes (turning it off, turning it on, adding or removing allowed sites) just aren't registered at the child's computer. Are others having the same issue?
Yes… you can report the issue on Microsoft feedback hub. I too have been having this issue for the last several days.
Feedback hub is listed as an app in the start menu on Windows 11. I don’t think you have to login. I’ve been encouraging everyone to do this. Perhaps we can flood the system.
Out of curiosity, is the processor on your affected device ARM or x86?
No idea
Probably x86/x64 if you aren't aware otherwise, but it may say in System -> System type. I'm on an ARM processor and wondering if the issue is specific to that system.
It worked perfectly last week
Someone also posted on Microsoft Learn...we are not the only ones.
Blocking websites requires using Edge and not chrome or another browser. Haven't personally checked the comments to see if someone else mentioned this yet but thought I would point it out.
Another question for folks - are "allowed site" setting changes actually working currently for anyone? Like, you have confirmed that you can currently turn it off and on, remove and add sites and have the adjusted settings work on the child's device? Just trying to gauge how widespread the problem is.
This setting does nothing. Every site is accessible
Unfortunately, it breaks a lot. I have Win Pro versions and I downloaded Edge templates in group policy to prevent my kids from creating new profiles, using edge in compatibility mode, in private browsing etc - only for the service to stop registering and blocking sites.
https://x.com/AZetaPsi/status/2001134715663696153?s=20
To whoever said, I was relying on the Family Safety to parent for me. That’s not what I’m talking about. I have it restricted to a white list of websites only. That way if some random ad comes by they can’t click on it and go down some random rabbit hole into the Internet. It means that I control what websites they can use. They are very young and not going to be going around, trying to find dark things on the Internet, but this protects them from random clicking onto things that will steal information by accident.
Microsoft Family gives strong vibes of project that was declared "finished" years ago after a re-org then shifted over to a "sustained engineering" team that checks the logs monthly and renews certificates. I haven't seen a new feature in the 5 years I've used it, and sometimes it's been broken for a week at a time. It's crazy considering all the current industry focus on age-gating. The world is focused on making mega corps responsible for checking kids ages rather than giving parents effective tools to enforce parenting decisions.
I find it generally usable to allow me to award ad-hoc time chunks to each child. It's already possible to lock down windows pretty well for a non-admin. Content filtering is better done outside. Unfortunately, the code base is too old to cover Steam Link/Oculus Link, which will happily continue streaming content and accepting input long after time is expired and the Windows session is locked.
Google Family Link is generally better, but still feels like "maintenance mode" product. I wish it had since integration points so the community could add integration with Windows or other platforms.
Bridge mode your provider router/modem and install a branded router. Most of them have controls by device for safe sites, times, throttling, etc. Anything at the local device will be bypassed, unless you want to step deep into the guts of policies etc.
Yes this was crap 3-5 years ago and apparently still is. Qustodio is a better option. Of course it is $$.
I sat on the chat with MS Support for 6 hrs and they "fixed" my issue of not being able to approve new sites to my <10 yo child having access to the unrestricted internet. But that one site I wanted to add...he can get there now...see it's fixed. I asked that it get escalated to someone. They called me back to say that the escalation team rejected it.
I'm trying to setup my old gaming pc for my 9 year old for Christmas. Everything seems to worked except for the edge settings which don't work at all.
I’m dealing with this issue now. I’m a system engineer and an Intune admin by trade and find this issue to be maddening. MS posts keep saying it’s a local/syncing issue. Would bet they it’s a routing issue. Or DNS, unfortunately it’s always DNS… but yeah, was working fine for the testing I’ve done on my kids new computers then suddenly broke entirely. The way it’s behaving leads me to believe there is a drop somewhere along the line. Ran into this issue a few times with Intune at my organization with updates to the required URLS but our FW vendor didn’t update EDL’s.
Sounds like when the system was configured, their user account may have been set up as a local administrator on the machine (which is always going to be the default for the first user that logs into the system after it's built). Once you have established yourself as a local administrator, make sure that you explicitly set their user account as a user, and not an administrator. If that needed changing, once you're done, log them out of their session and have them log them back in to see if it behaves correctly.
I'm administrator, and the first account of their system.
They are a member and added via the already linked family safety settings.
There's literally no way this shouldn't work.
Agree completely. Just trying to eliminate possibilities that weren't mentioned in the post.
You expected Microsoft software to work in a sensible manner?
I am sorry, if you are reliant on the technical controls to parent for you, I believe you are doing it wrong.
My Fiancee is a third-grade teacher. All the kids use Linux/Chrome OS based devices, which have IT managed Security controls on it. This is often stronger than normal parent controls added to the OS. Also Linux is more Secure then Windows.
The amount of porn those kids still access in third grade is insane despite all this. A broad control blocking all domains is the logical parental control here. Put in what you want your kids to have access to. block all others. It shouldn't be the other way around.
If you read my post you would see they are never going to use it unmonitored, I'm not relying on parental controls to "parent for me", and it is set up as whitelist in the Safety app, that isn't working.
They've had Chromebooks that have pretty good parental controls, and while Linux might have better security, which distro has parental controls? I've not heard of any so I'm happy to be educated.
Ignore the troll