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Well here’s a fun little article from the grandaddy of Mac journalism.

Responding to a reader query about how to control what a child has access to on an iPhone/iPod Touch, Macworld editor Christopher Breen details how to turn on the kid-friendly “Restrictions” setting, and then promptly points out how ridiculously easy it is to turn them off.

All your kid has to do is restore the iPod touch or iPhone in iTunes. This removes the restrictions. If he or she is sneaky, they’d then go on to restore a backup of the device and then enable restrictions on their own—using their passcode instead of yours. That way, should you eyeball the thing and see Safari and YouTube missing from the Home screen, you might think your restrictions were still in place. Of course, if you’re sneaky you’d then grab hold of the device and test restrictions to see if it works with your passcode. If not, you’ve been pwned by your kid.

Breen goes on to detail how a parent can prevent that by also securing iTunes, but then spells out why that scenario won’t work, either. There’s more detailed instructions you can read at the Macworld site, which has the additional benefit of not being full of those damn subscription cards.

Via [Macworld]