UAC - Parental Controls (Application Access) Doesn't Work

I created a new account for my daughter and turned on Parental Controls. I only used the Application Access portion.

I Chose the option to only allow applications I choose, and made sure all were disabled.

I then logged in to her user name and was surprised what happened.

First off, Internet Explorer still worked. Though I start with this one because as I understand it as an IT, IE is part of Explorer, so it sorta has to work no matter what. But I still don't fully understand it.

Then I realized all of the games worked. Solitaire and such. Why is that? I didn't allow those.

Next I realized Command Prompt works... Not only that, but I could Right-Click it and choose "Run As Administrator" and could pretty much do as I please.

This is on a STANDARD Account, Not admin, with ZERO Applications selected in enabled Parental Control.

Also, and this is more of an annoyance... when I log in as my daughter, I get a bunch of pop ups saying applications couldn't start because they were disabled by parental controls. Like Java update or Chrome update and the such. That is actually correct, I don't want her account performing automatic (or otherwise) updates for the software. But I also don't want a bunch of (essentially) errors popping up about it.

I don't expect some amazingly flawless psychic parental controls application as a built-in for my Windows. But I do expect the simple option of "Only allow applications I specify" to literally only allow that (sans the obvious ones like Explorer.exe).

So my goal with this discussion is to learn how to actually lock out everything except what I specify. Especially the ability for a Standard, Parental-Controlled account to not be able to run CMD as Administrator.

Continue reading...