Apple's Content Filter For Kids Passes On Violent And Pornographic

Jeet Parikh - Oct 01, 2018

Though the iOS 12 feature a content filter for kids, it appears that the filter still let violent and pornographic search results sneak through.

The parental control feature that Apple added on iOS 12 is quite inconsistent. It does block some terms relating to sex. However, it still allows some troubling results like terrorism support or alt-right sites to get through. This is spotted by o.school, a site specifically designed for sex education.

It-blocks-out-safe-sex — It blocks out "safe sex:

We can find this new feature under the Screen Time feature that was introduced by Apple in iOS 12 last month. After activating Screen Time, adults can then make it so that the iPhone will hide any content that is inappropriate from the kids. However, according to what o.school found, the filter blocks out searches such as “sex education”. “hotline for sex assault”, and “safe sex”. On the other hand, it lets searches relating to participating in terrorist groups, poisoning, and even bombing. There is an interesting aspect in that results for the search “sexual assault hotline” are still visible. From this, we can see that Apple is just simply banning anything that mentions the word “sex”. It has not extended the terms of restriction to certain porn terms, extremism, or even violence terms. To take an example, you can still search for numerous pornographic subreddits without any problem. In addition, you can get results if you search “how do I jerk off” while nothing will appear when you use “female masturbation”.

Thus, teens can pull the results they want through this faulty filer that is based on words. We can see how poor a job this filter is doing to keep the real inappropriate content out. In the meantime, it is also censoring wrong sites like Teen Vogue. We have contacted Apple to get a comment on the issue.

To see for yourself the things that are censored, you need to go to Screen Time, tap Content & Privacy Restrictions. Then, you choose Content Restrictions. Next, scroll down until you reach Web Content then tap Limit Adult Websites. There is also the option of letting kids go to allowed sites and block certain sites, which look better than using the faulty filter.