Approve email parental control requests

Jul 09, '10 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: Numbski

This hint is a followup to this Apple discussion thread, which is now archived.

Here's a description of the issue:

You have a child with Parental Controls enabled and email managed. The child gets an email from someone or attempts to send email to someone that is not permitted. You have your email address listed as the permission address, and get an email notification with a button in Apple Mail that reads 'Always Allow.' Clicking that button does nothing.

If you look at the headers for that request message, they look like this (this is from the child sending to someone that is not yet permitted):

Subject: (Subject Here)
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 20:33:39 -0500
Resent-To: (Your Address Here)
Resent-From: Child's Name (Child's email address)
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.915)
X-Apple-Mail-Parental-Control-Addresses: (Disallowed Recipient Name) (Email address)
X-Apple-Mail-Parental-Control-Request: recipients
Resent-Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 20:33:39 -0500
So, after that lengthy bit, here's the issue in a nutshell - many people have multiple email aliases that deliver to one mailbox. I have tony@mydomain and numbski@mydomain. Apple mail is configured to send from numbski@mydomain, but I had the kid's parental controls set to send permission requests to tony@mydomain. The result is that the permission request doesn't even render properly, let alone allow you to act on the request in any useful way.

The fix is either to change the address in the parental controls or change your sending email address in Apple Mail. You have to respond from the same address listed on the header line 'Resent-To: (Your Address Here).'

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. It certainly makes sense that the authorizing email has to come from the correct address.]

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