The rules are still there. They are just not there.
What is actually happening
Chrome profiles are not accounts on the computer and they are not skins. Each one is a separate copy of the browser's world: its own bookmarks, its own history, its own settings, its own sign-in, and — the part that matters here — its own extensions.
An extension is installed into a profile. It is not installed into Chrome, and it is definitely not installed into the computer. So when your child clicks the avatar in the top corner and adds a person, what they get is a browser with an empty toolbar. No blocker, no search filter, no rules of any kind, because none of that was ever a property of the machine.
Adding one takes three clicks and asks for nothing. There is no password, no confirmation from an adult, no mention that this is a significant act. From the browser's point of view it is not one — the feature exists so that two adults can share a laptop without reading each other's mail, which is a good reason. It is simply also the shortest route around anything installed next door.
This is worth separating from the other bypasses, because the response is different. Nobody defeated a lock. There was no lock at the boundary at all. The rule was never running in the place they went.
Two things follow, and both are checkable in a minute. First, open the avatar menu on their Chrome and count what is listed there — you cannot fix what you have not counted, and none of it is hidden. Second, open the extra one and look at the toolbar. If it is empty, you have just seen the entire mechanism with your own eyes.
The three places this goes wrong
1. You installed once and assumed it covered the computer. Almost everyone does. There is nothing in the install that says "this applies to this profile only", so the reasonable assumption is the wrong one.
2. You deleted the extra profile and stopped. Deleting it removes today's route and leaves the avatar menu exactly where it was. Three clicks later there is another one, with a different name, because making a new one is not a punishable act in any way your child can perceive.
3. Your child is an administrator on the computer. With the run of the machine, this is the least of it — they can also remove the extension outright, which no extension can prevent. The account step underneath is doing more work than any browser setting.
How to make it hold
Do three things, in this order.
Count what is in that avatar menu and get rid of the ones nobody needs. Then install Parentech in each one that is left and sign in with your account, so the toolbar is not empty anywhere, and set the same PIN. Anything you have not covered has no rules in it at all, and it is better to know that than to assume otherwise.
Then close the door underneath: a standard account on the computer for your child, without administrator rights, keeping the administrator password to yourself. That is also the answer to the second browser they will think of next, and it is free.
Finally, say out loud that you have done it. One made quietly is a small experiment. One made after a conversation about why the rules exist is a much bigger decision, and most kids do not make it.
The part that needs you not to be there
The timing on this one is unforgiving. A new profile can be created, used for an hour and deleted before you are home, and the browser will not mention any of it to you. Everything about catching it depends on somebody being at that computer, and the somebody is not going to be you.
You cannot solve absence with a better setting. What you can do is make the rules cover more ground and make them reachable while you are elsewhere: every Chrome in the house running the same list, changes you make from parentech.app on your phone arriving within half a minute, and the dashboard locking itself the moment it is closed rather than sitting unlocked behind a tab all afternoon.
The honest version of the pitch: everything above works free on one computer, changed at that computer with the PIN. The family plan buys reach — your phone, the other computers, and a different list on each. If there is a single laptop in the house and you are usually next to it, use the free one and spend the money on something else.
What this still does not reach
- Anywhere on that Chrome you have not installed it. Rules live where they are installed, and honesty about that is more useful than a promise.
- A phone or a tablet. Parentech guards Chrome on the computer it is on.
- A child with administrator rights. They can remove the extension entirely, and no extension can stop that.
Questions parents ask
Can I stop them adding profiles?
Not from inside an extension. What you can do is give them a standard account on the computer without administrator rights, remove the spare ones, and cover what remains, which is the combination that actually holds.
Does the same list work everywhere on that Chrome?
It does once Parentech is installed and signed in there. Sign in with your account in each one and the rules and PIN are identical across them.
They are signed in to their own Google account in that profile. Does that matter?
No. The rules are enforced on the computer by the extension, not by whichever account is signed in to the browser. Signing out of Chrome does not switch them off.
If this is happening to you, one of these usually is too
Private windows are the first thing they try · They installed a second browser · They keep unblocking the site
More on how blocking works: Block websites. Free on one computer — what it costs for every Chrome in the house.