Safari can't make a secure connection

[Concerneddad]

For several of the accounts on my iMac, I've set parental controls to "try and limit access to adult content" When I do this, Safari stops being able to access "https" websites such as gmail.com etc. If I set the parental controls setting to "unrestricted access" the problem goes away. I don't want the kids to have "unlimited acess" but I do want to let them access "https" sites as appropiate. I've seen several old threads on this subject, but nothing so far that I could find related to it being caused by the parental controls or how to fix it. I'm running OS X 10.6.3 on an iMac quad core. I'm also very new to the Mac world (6 month) so I'm pretty much at the beginner level.

 

[djackmac]

What kind of parameters did you set up? If there are certain sites you want them to be able to access, you have to manually add those sites to allow access or the default is to make the controls as restrictive as possible.

 

[Concerneddad]

There is an additional setting that lets you specify which sites can and can't be accessed even if I specify an htpps site should be allowed, safari still has the same problem

 

[djackmac]

Try to allow the overall domain name or home page of the site instead of narrowing it down to the secure Website URL.

 

[Concerneddad]

I allowed http//:www.gmail.com, http//:www.google.come, and https// but I still get the same result. Is that what you meant? I also tried to go to google.com first and then to gmail but I still get the same error from gmail. I can get to http//:www.google.com with out any trouble but if I try to go to https//:www.google.com I get the same error. I get the same error for any https website.

 

[djackmac]

Go to the logs in parental controls and look at the URL for whats being blocked. Also you usually don't just try to go to something like https://www.google.com. It should automatically redirect you to http://www.google.com. Is this when signing into gmail from google where it gets blocked?

 

[Concerneddad]

It doesn't show up in the logs of the parental controls because its not being blocked by parental controls. Rather when the parental controls are set to "try to limit adult content" something changes so that an error is created when going to "https" sites. Initially I thought the sites were being blocked but later realized it was an error not a message saying the site was blocked.

Your comment on the redirect is right, usually we type in "gmail.com" and we get redirected to "https://www.google.com/accounts......" which is where the error comes from. We also get the error from some of the kids school websites when they click on a link which takes us to an "https:" page on the schools website

Thank you so much for trying to help me with this issue, it's driving me crazy. I personally think its an bug in the OS X system. I wonder if the same thing happens on other peoples computers with accounts managed by Parental Controls of if it's unique to me.

 

[djackmac]

Go into system preferences/security and see if the firewall is enabled.

 

[Concerneddad]

The firewall in not enabled, should it be, I assume not

 

[Concerneddad]

When I use parental controls on my Kids accounts to "try and limit access to adult websites" Safari gives me an error when trying to reach secure "https" websites. I'm trying to determine if this is a bug in OS X. I'm wondering if others get this same result. Is there anyone out there that verify that their system works when parental controls are set to "try and limit access to adult websites"???

 

[Concerneddad]

Problem Solved,

See http://tech.kateva.org/2010/04/os-x-parental-controls-https-bug.html