Microsoft Family Safety Blocking Chrome Browser

Question

Hi,

So as of late last night, we've had students find that their chrome browser has been blocked my Microsoft family safety.

Seems to coincide with the latest vulnerability presented with older chrome versions, however its blocking all old and new versions of chrome.

Becoming a major pain as students are reccomended to use chrome which, of course, cant be used at the moment for all of our windows devices that have microsoft family features turned on.

Any way to easily get this fixed? especially since it only happened last night.

Answer 1

Why has Microsoft blocked my chrome browser. I haven't got any family security on my tablet, I am 76 years old and I am the only person using my tablet. So please free up my browser. Thankyou

Answer 2

OUCH!

The blocking of Chrome by Microsoft Family Safety isn't a cause for concern, but rather consistent and correct. Anyone who claims otherwise hasn't understood the purpose and function of Microsoft Family Safety. But I'll explain it to you, and then you'll see that it makes sense.

Microsoft Family Safety is a system for controlling the use of PCs (and to a limited extent, smartphones, see below) by minors. It's not just about regulating PC usage, controlling installed apps, and regulating online purchases, but also about protecting children from harmful website content. For this purpose, Microsoft Family Safety includes age-appropriate filter functions that block visits to websites classified accordingly, such as pornography, violence, extremism, drugs, age-inappropriate social media, etc. Parents therefore enter their children's ages in the child account.

You can also maintain a blacklist and whitelist of websites in your child's profile to allow for intervention. For example, you should explicitly whitelist the websites of the sports club, school, school cloud, etc., to ensure nothing goes wrong. Automated classifications aren't perfect, and nothing would be more annoying if kids couldn't access their school-set-up class chat due to an incorrect classification. You see, I'm speaking from experience; I've seen it all before.

This protection feature is integrated into the Microsoft Edge browser. If you use a different browser, all of these protection features can be easily circumvented, as these browsers don't access Microsoft Family Safety. Therefore, it's only logical to block other browsers on a user account that's online under the control of the Microsoft Family Safety functionality.

If you still want to give your kids access to Chrome, you do so at your own risk and sit next to them when they go online with it.

The risk can be minimized, but it requires additional effort: As a parent, you also set up the Family functionality on Google, which then immediately affects the child's smartphone as well. You also register the child's account on the Chrome browser, accessible under Microsoft Family Safety in Windows. Then Google's child protection mechanisms take effect. These are similarly sophisticated as those on Microsoft, except there are no blacklists or whitelists which you can maintain by yourself.

I wrote above that Microsoft Family Safety can also affect the child's smartphone. Yes, you just need to install the Android phone on the child's smartphone using the Microsoft Launcher, the "Your Phone" app from Microsoft, and ideally also the Microsoft Edge browser, and link it to the Microsoft child account and the child's PC. The Microsoft Family app also offers certain options that aren't available with Google's Family Safety app. It used to offer even more, but Microsoft has since removed it from the app because it's now redundant with existing Google Family features.

I know some people will groan, this sounds like surveillance, yes, it is surveillance, and children are already being given Google and Microsoft accounts. But that's just the way the world is. We adults can't constantly be there while our kids surf and chat. But we have a mandate from politics and society to protect our children from harmful content. We also want our children to become something good, not to fall into such criminal environments or allow themselves to be manipulated into becoming mass murderers through chats.

Open source isn't an alternative here, by the way. None of the Linux distributions offers such a child protection system, and Firefox or other open source browsers like Vivaldi, Opera, Ungoogled Chrome, Waterfox, etc., don't care about child protection. If you want to protect your children, you can't avoid Microsoft Family Safety and similar features from Google and Apple.

The world today is different from the one we experienced as children. The Commodore 64 only allowed very limited online access, and the content of BBSs was very limited, if our parents even allowed it given the exorbitant phone bills. I got grounded once when I used the accustic coupler to connect from Germany somewhere in the US... The accustic coupler wasn't just lying around on my desk anymore; it was only available with good reason and certain school grades for a certain period of time, and a foreign country phone connection was blocked. Microsoft Family Safety and similar from Google and Apple is the modern "intelligent" version of this.

And another aspect: There's a lot of excitement about providers technically blocking access to things like pornography; we're seeing this issue again in France right now. This kind of child protection is also seen as a general tool for internet censorship, and perhaps it is. If all parents consistently installed one of Microsoft, Google, and Apple's child protection features on their children's PCs and smartphones, it would take the wind out of the sails of ignorant politicians, who obviously haven't heard of these solutions either, who are demanding age verification at the DNS level or something like that. These child protection features offer exactly that, decentralized on children's PCs and smartphones.

And one last aspect, renaming chrome.exe... Yeah, how stupid is that? The chrome1.exe will never receive security updates; instead, an updated chrome.exe will be located in the same directory, but it's no longer used. Guys, the browser, along with your email client and your own stupidity, is THE gateway for malware, ransomware, fraud, etc. on your PC! And in this context, a pro tip: Remove your kids with their Microsoft Family Safety-protected child account from the PC's local admin group. Create a separate admin account for installing software, and don't tell your kids the password. That's best practice anyway.

Answer 3

My case has something different .. I not able to edit family organiser nor change the screen time

Answer 4

Microsoft Family Safety Blocking Chrome Browser

Answer 5

To be clear, Family Safety doesn't "turn itself on" -- it's an option controlled by the Family Organizer.

If you (the family organizer) visit [https://account.microsoft.com/family/home](https://account.microsoft.com/family/home` "account.microsoft.com") and log in with your Microsoft account, you will find the options to control Family Safety.

If you're not seeing that, then try logging in to the site using the child's account. This will show you who the family organizer is. For example, here's what my kid sees when he goes there: