What is Google attempting on my guest account?

[DaveWT]

I don't have many occasions to use my guest account (El Capitan on a mid-2011 iMac) but we had company over the weekend and I let them use the guest account to check their email. As soon as the guest account's desktop came up the following dialog box appeared:



I am not concerned about the "Parental Controls restricts access..." part of the message.

What I am curious about is just what software Google is trying to update on my guest account. I try to avoid most things "Google" in general.

 

[chas_m]

Man do I ever love the ability of the forums to post pictures!!!

It's probably nothing -- Google is attempting to check the webpage being accessed against its list of safe (non-phishing/non-malware) websites. Was Chrome being used as the browser rather than Safari?

If it was Safari, does the browser have any extensions that are owned or controlled by Google, or is the home page set for Google?

 

[DaveWT]

Chas, thanks for your thoughts, but there is NO browser in use when this dialog pops up. This dialog box pops up immediately as soon as the guest account is entered. Before any attempt is made to launch Safari or anything else.

I did look at the account settings and see that parental controls are selected. I assume this is a default setting for the guest account as I can not remember ever doing anything to alter settings for the guest account. When I click on the "manage parental controls" button I don't see anything alarming in the resulting tabs.

And of course as soon as I log out of the guest account any files etc. that were created in that session get deleted.

 

[chas_m]

I can't say as I know the issue then, but it clearly has something to do with the Parental Controls put on the account. I wasn't even aware you could put Parental controls on a guest account. At a guess I'd say Parental Controls is trying to load an updated list of safe browsing sites prior to any browser being launched. Try turning off Parental Controls, go back into the guest account and see if you still get that pop up.

 

[DaveWT]

Yes that - disabling parental controls - certainly has removed the problem. I am not sure how parental controls ever got set. I never consiously enabled them and just assumed that was the default when I noticed it recently.

The only thing I notice now is that when I go into the guest account it takes forever (spinning cog) before it puts up the guest desktop.

I will ignore it in any case. I think this is the second time I have ever been asked to allow access (via the guest account) in over 5 years.