Apple has acknowledged a years-old flaw in its Screen Time parental control system that allowed children to bypass parental restrictions on viewing unwanted content online. But after fixing the bug, many flaws remained in Screen Time.

This problem has existed for about three years. In 2021, security researchers Andreas Jägersberger and Ro Achterberg twice informed Apple that children can easily bypass parental restrictions when visiting unwanted sites by entering a certain sequence of characters into the address bar of the Safari browser. However, both times they were told that this was not a security issue and was not a software feature, according to TheVerge.

However, after Jaegersberger and Achterberg returned Wall StreetJournal After complaining about Apple’s inaction, the company finally acknowledged the bug and soon informed parents that the issue had been resolved in the iOS 17.1 update. But some parents still have issues with the app and are unhappy that Apple doesn’t allow them to use the same apps from other developers.

The incident showed that the built-in parental control tools in iOS are far from perfect. But even so, while Apple limits the use of third-party apps to monitor kids’ activity on iOS, its own Screen Time solution still has many shortcomings.

Previously, bugs were reported due to screen time limit settings in Screen Time not always being applied correctly. The Verge points out that although some flaws have been fixed in recent iOS updates, Apple does not pay enough attention to the development and testing of parental control features.

As a result, parents are forced to rely on a single program from Apple that regularly fails and does not provide adequate protection for children online. Experts are calling on Apple to grant access to the API to third-party developers to create alternative and more advanced parental control apps for iOS. Apple has not yet made a statement on this issue.