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Apple Moves To Stop Kids Racking Up iTunes Bills

Posted by samzenpus on from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-bad-children? dept.

Xacid writes "Apple Inc. has changed how purchases inside iPhone and iPad games are authorized after customers complained that their kids were racking up hundreds of dollars worth of charges. The issue was that after a user entered his or her iTunes password on a device, the device didn't prompt for the password again for 15 minutes. Any purchases, whether in the iTunes store or inside kid-friendly games such as 'The Smurf's Village,' went through without a new password prompt. This meant that parents who handed over their iPhones or iPads to their kids were sometimes shocked by large purchases of 'Smurfberries' and other virtual bling."

2 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Before all you ABA haters get in a tissy... by romanval · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is how you avoid this problem:

    Step 1: Get Kid's iPod Touch/iPhone.
    Step 2: Setting->General->Restrictions->Enable Restrictions. Remember the passcode.
    Step 3: Setting->General->Restrictions->In App Purchases, TURN OFF.
    .
    That wasn't so hard now was it?

  2. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by DdJ · · Score: 4, Informative

    They already have that kind of thing, and even the concept of giving an allowance to a kid's iTunes account.

    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2105

    The "problem" arises here when the parent hands their own iOS device with their own account to the kid within epsilon of using the account themselves (eg. right after they installed a game). If the kids really had their own iOS devices and iTunes accounts to begin with, the problems aren't the same.