I guess it happens to everyone in IT at one time or another. I was asked to lockdown a single user profile on a stand aline WIN7 Home Premium box for a friend to prevent her 15 year old son from using IM to sex chat with people.
I enabled Win7 Parental controls.
Removed access to MSN Messenger and yahoo Messenger.
I setup time restrictions which would prevent him from getting up after she went to bed and playing online.
I removed the teens password.
I ensured that my friends account was password protected and that she was the only administrative account on that box.
Two days went by before I checked in on the system. Somehow this kid managed to disable parental controls and regained access to everthing I restricted. Without administrative access I’m not sure how he managed to pull this off.
Are MS Prental Controls that weak that the user its supposed to be limiting is able to un-do it? Could this kid have guessed his mom’s password or maybe his sisters passward (standard user) and shut off the restrictions? Could he somehow have restored the system to undo the parental controls?
This is really ticking me off…I can’t believe that MS would promote these tools if they were so easy to get around. Any insights, and advice, would be appreciated.
