Apple Moves To Stop Kids Racking Up iTunes Bills

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple Moves To Stop Kids Racking Up iTunes Bills

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @08:47AM 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."

52 of 232 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Sounds like... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-16 08:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

... it's a parenting problem.
1. Re:Sounds like... by bl4nk · 2011-03-16 08:54 · Score: 2
  
  Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid that parents work the problem out with their children.
2. Re:Sounds like... by Dr_Barnowl · 2011-03-16 09:05 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Speaking as a parent, if my daughter did this (and I would be shocked if she did), I would make damn sure sufficient wrath descended upon her that she'd never do it again. Firstly, for stealing from her father, and secondly, for spending money on stupid shit.
  If your kids don't think their actions have consequences, you're doing it wrong. Your job isn't to insulate them from the world, it's just to put safety wheels on it until they can ride it safely.
3. Re:Sounds like... by geminidomino · 2011-03-16 09:11 · Score: 2
  
  How is this not a safety-wheel?
  Yeah, racking up a $1500 cell phone bill should be sufficient to teach your kid about the consequences of it unless he's a moron, but it's a pretty expensive lesson to even happen once.
4. Re:Sounds like... by IorDMUX · 2011-03-16 09:14 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  That's modern parenting for you... plop your kid in front of the TV (in their bed room, of course), or Wii, or iPad, or whatever other gadget, and get them out of your hair for a couple hours after work until they pass out, exhausted, from extensive video screen stimulation.
  Really? You think that's how this stuff happens?
  
  I will hand my young son my phone with the Talking Tomcat "ca-caty!" application when I have to wait in a long checkout/service/wahtever line, lest I be holding a screaming toddler who -- like any 2.5-year-old -- prefers to run around the store rather than stand still for 10 minutes.
  
  However, there is a link in the app to download extra features and animals, and even at his age, he can access it quite easily. I can't imagine what kind of charges I would have racked up in the thirty seconds I spend paying for groceries or arguing with Customer Service if my Android phone didn't require extra authorization before making purchases.
  
  --
  >> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
5. Re:Sounds like... by spun · 2011-03-16 09:24 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Blame the victim much? You really don't understand the issue here. How about explaining scams and cons to your daughter, maybe explain that imaginary smurfberries cost real money, that a single ring tone costs $4.99 a month, and various other absurdities of online commerce. What, you think these kids are knowingly racking up that amount of debt? Yeah, then I've got a bridge to sell you, sucker.
  What makes you think this is about kids not understanding the consequences of their actions, rather than online scams and shady business practices? I despise smugly superior people who take the phrase "let the buyer beware" to mean "any con against an unaware buyer is fair game." Stop blaming the victim. Stop criticizing legitimate efforts by businesses to address the concerns of their customers. It's almost as if you want these people to lose money, so you can feel superior to them. Do you perhaps feel that social Darwinism will not weed out the "inferior" people if we protect them from human predators? Maybe you think the predators, being stronger, should have more rights than the weak and stupid? I don't know. I really can't even fathom a mindset like yours.
  
  --
  - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
6. Re:Sounds like... by ErikZ · 2011-03-16 09:29 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Because the amount of gray area scams out there are LIMITLESS.
  You must learn how to keep an eye out for this stuff, and the best time to really learn is when you're a poor kid.
  You don't do your kids any favors by sending them out the door wrapped head to toe in pillows.
  
  --
  Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
7. Re:Sounds like... by david_thornley · 2011-03-16 09:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Speaking as a parent, if my son were young enough again to be interested in Smurfberries, I'd likely figure that he didn't know what he was doing; also, punishing a child for something he or she doesn't understand is stupid and unfair. I also have no idea how to teach a child that young that touching buttons on a phone is (a) stealing money, or (b) spending money (or, for that matter, that Smurfberries are stupid).
  My son was aware that actions have consequences from an early age, but when he was four he really wasn't good at predicting those consequences, particularly in an environment set up to scam him. I was a lot older than that before I realized that money was more than pieces of metal and paper, but also those numbers in the bank books.
  Consequently, some sort of safety wheel to make sure they don't inadvertantly spend large amounts of money strikes me as a real good idea.
  
  --
  "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
8. Re:Sounds like... by rainmouse · 2011-03-16 10:15 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  ... Apple is offering a technical solution to the problem.
  Or another way of putting it is that Apple are deliberating over months the 'problem' of kids having full access to their parents credit cards for any itunes purchases for 15 minutes after their parents giving them a gift. I know all the fanboys are lining up to blame the parents for being stupid enough to pay for something for their children without reading slashdot first, personally their response makes me feel they are far more stupid only for trusting Apple with their credit cards in the first place.
9. Re:Sounds like... by lactose99 · 2011-03-16 10:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  No its not, its providing an ALTERNATIVE to what might become bad behavior.
  
  --
  Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
10. Re:Sounds like... by davester666 · 2011-03-16 11:25 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, but the games in question are clearly aimed at fairly young children, who don't have a great concept of numbers, let alone money [as in, 2-5 year olds]. The company that made them had things like a wheelbarrow of smurfberries for $99.00. To contrast this, they also make freemium games for adults, with in-app purchases maxing out at under $5 each.
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
11. Re:Sounds like... by lgw · 2011-03-16 11:59 · Score: 2
  
  That approach only starts working after a certain age. It doesn't work at 2.5 years old. Plus if you distract the kid before he starts trying to set the store on fire, you're not rewarding bad behavior, you're preventing it. Most children of that age can no more fail to cause trouble if you're not paying attention to him than he can learn to juggle - a certain amount of development is required.
  
  --
  Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
12. Re:Sounds like... by node+3 · 2011-03-16 12:35 · Score: 2
  
  If your kids don't think their actions have consequences, you're doing it wrong.
  If you don't think it should be expected that children will make mistakes, you're doing it wrong. Given that children will make mistakes, it seems like a good idea for Apple to help reduce the negative impact of some easy-to-make mistakes.
  After all, what's better, to make it easy for a child to unknowingly (or even knowingly) make $1,500 in in app purchases, and just punish them after the fact for it, or make it harder to make that mistake in the first place? It's not like children are going to comprehend the amount of money involved even if they do know they are racking up an actual bill.
13. Re:Sounds like... by DRJlaw · 2011-03-16 13:05 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Saying that it's a parenting problem does not absolve Apple of a practical need to deal with it.
  Yes, my child purchasing things without asking due to a poorly designed authentication mechanism (use case analysis, anyone) is proximately my problem. I must solve that problem.
  I can solve that problem in many ways:
  1. I can manually toggle in app purchasing, and hope that I never forget
  2. I can teach my child to never ever push a button when they see that funny $ without talking to a parent, and hope that they perfectly comply
  3. I can call Apple out on its bonehead use case analysis. The trite 'he who has the gold makes the rules' also applies to collections of customers. Make customers happy, make money. Make customers unhappy, make less money.
  4. etc.
  Most importantly, I can engage in defense in depth by pursuing solutions at the same time. Trolls bleat "sounds like a parenting problem," and parents demanding that a braindead authentication mechanism change get ridiculed because these self-aggrandizing paragons of foresight cannot conceive a world in which others would do anything other than 'blame Apple.' An attempt to get Apple to improve the product couldn't possibly be made by people who believe that it's ultimately their responsibility to deal with the problem. After all, everybody except for you and the rest of the Illuminati are "sheeple."
  House fire? Sounds like a homeowner problem to me. House fire caused by an Easy Bake oven? Yeah, that's a homeowner problem too. You should have been handcuffed to your kid at all times, or else taken the lightbulb out. After all, nobody making an Easy Bake over could foresee that a child would leave something in it for hours, and even if they could, we simply don't care about the manufacturer's ability to fix the risk for $2/unit. Don't complain about the fire risk (fix it yourself), don't call the fire department (put it our yourself), and for heaven's sake don't create a moral hazard by allowing people to take insurance out against fire (enablers, every one).
  Your ultra-libertarian utopia is nothing more than a warmed over Hobbesian distopia. I'll do you one better: Adam Smith's utopia. If the value of the effort required for Apple to mitigate this in-game purchase problem is substantially less than the value of all of parents' collective efforts to control their kiddies' in-game purchases, then Apple will (as it has) volunteer some 'responsibility'. Why? Because they can generate greater value, gain sales, and make money doing it. They know that because parents have complained and they can see the value proposition. Make the product that your customers want, solve the problems that your customers have, and keep your customer happy. And that last part most definitely "sounds like an Apple problem."
14. Re:Sounds like... by jo_ham · 2011-03-16 14:55 · Score: 2
  
  So, your kids are "scammers" now?
  And it sounds like this is exactly what Apple are doing - ensuring that purchases are confirmed with a password, even if the "15 minute convenience grace" of entering your password is still in effect, sort of like how sudo escalates for a small amount of time, so you can execute a few commands before you need to authenticate again.
  (although I haven't sudo'ed [sudone?] for a while, so I might be misremembering, and for the sake of a slashdot comment I'm not invoking root just to test it! rm -rf your own hard drive :D )
15. Re:Sounds like... by Stuarticus · 2011-03-17 00:53 · Score: 2
  
  Kindly explain this to my 15 month old, I let her play with several apps on my iphone, but somehow, it's like she can't even read or understand the concept of money. Maybe a more authoritarian approach as you suggest would have more success in drilling in these important lessons.
  
  --
  If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
16. Re:Sounds like... by TheFakeMcCoy · 2011-03-17 01:18 · Score: 2
  
  So what's your parent excuse for that response?
In other news... by MrEricSir · 2011-03-16 08:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

...parents left cookies on the table and were shocked to find that their children ate them when they weren't looking.

--
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
1. Re:In other news... by bl4nk · 2011-03-16 08:53 · Score: 2
  
  Said parents are now organizing a class action lawsuit against all manufacturers of cookie and cookie-like products.
2. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-16 09:01 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  ...parents left cookies on the table and were shocked to find that their children ate them when they weren't looking.
  Don't worry, citizens! Your elected officials are on the case! Legislation is being introduced requiring safety locks on all cookie jars sold in the United States. Rumor has it that an Anti-Cookie-Trafficking Agreement is also in the works that would extend these protections around the world!
3. Re:In other news... by MrEricSir · 2011-03-16 09:06 · Score: 2
  
  "This make Cookie Monster very sad!'
  
  --
  There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
4. Re:In other news... by specialguy92 · 2011-03-16 09:11 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You're living in the past. The Veggie Moster is indifferent to the cookies' suffering.
  
  --
  I can never spell "recursion" correctly on Google
5. Re:In other news... by demonlapin · 2011-03-16 10:28 · Score: 2
  
  Perhaps there's something I'm missing, but I've never noticed that entering the password is good for 15 minutes, and it's not mentioned in iTunes' help files that I can see. I always thought I had to enter the password for every purchase, because that's what I've always done.
6. Re:In other news... by lactose99 · 2011-03-16 10:28 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  To be fair, it isn't mentioned anywhere in the pamphlet you receive with the iPhone or iPod, its buried within the iTunes website terms-and-conditions (at least last time I checked). If there were a warning label you had to pull-off each new iDevice I'd be right there with you, but you really have to look for it to find the iTunes lockout timeout (at least you did before this story broke).
  That being said I'm generally not a believer of ignorance-as-a-defense, but I can certainly see why Apple would change this behavior and why the FTC would look into it.
  
  --
  Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
It's about time by jeffmeden · 2011-03-16 08:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

Thank god they wised up and put in a new password prompt for in-game purchases. Now all they have to do is sit back and wait for the complaints to come in that "my kids said 'hey what's the password?' and then I got hundreds of dollars of racked up charges." Never mind the fact that they have a KID'S GAME that includes paying for virtual nothingness. I guess Steve's new motto is "get them addicted early."
1. Re:It's about time by netsharc · 2011-03-16 09:10 · Score: 2
  
  Hey, those carts of virtual berries cost $100 (IIRC, even if it's $20 that's freaking insane!), and of course Apple won't do anything about it, since, hey, the Don gets a 30% cut!
  
  --
  What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
2. Re:It's about time by v1 · 2011-03-16 09:13 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  if I had it to design myself, I'd make it so that apps could do in-game purchases that would require a call to the store API. That would pause the game and pop up a purchase area that didn't look like the game, that required their password for access. Then within that area they could buy items. Then leave that area to return to the game. Then require the password next time they wanted to go there.
  That would help create a division between the game and the store. Right now with completely in-game purchasing, the kids don't see the purchase as anything other than just another button to click in the game. It needs to have a completely different, consistent look to it, that says "you are not in the game right now, you are in the STORE, spending REAL MONEY".
  Another alternate implementation could be to just make such an area to "fund" the game. Then the game devs could implement their own in-game experience store, but that would draw on the funds transferred from the store. That would allow the parents to say "ok Timmy I've put $10 into your Smurfs store, spend it wisely!" That would actually be a good experience for the kids... they need to learn the value of money. It would also relieve the parents of having to mess with the store every time their kid wanted to buy their pet grasshopper a different color of shoes for a quarter etc.
  
  --
  I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
3. Re:It's about time by jeffmeden · 2011-03-16 09:13 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Exactly. The whole notion that it should be as easy as possible to spend money is rooted in the corporation's desire for us to not think twice about it.
  Back when Blockbuster was relevant, (and gamefly didn't exist) they had an all-you-can-rent plan for games. The one requirement to signing up was that you needed to use a genuine credit card, not a bank-backed credit/debit card but a genuine going-into-debt card. What's the difference? The real credit card won't stop you from spending beyond your limit; ergo they get their money no matter what even if you can't technically afford it.
  Easy spending is an epidemic (in most western nations at least) just as bad as easy eating, and we just keep lining up to support the companies that are sucking us in.
4. Re:It's about time by ackthpt · 2011-03-16 09:13 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  o_o
  "You found a treasure chest."
  O_o
  "It's a big SHINY treasure chest."
  O_O
  "It's probably full of really neat stuff!"
  @_@
  "Buy a key? Only $10. (Y/n)"
  
  --
  
  A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
5. Re:It's about time by egamma · 2011-03-16 09:18 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You have to draw the line somewhere, but the whole notion that online retailers insist upon saving your credit information is absurd. Beyond the tendency to overspend, there's also the issue of all of a sudden you have to worry about somebody stealing the details and running up large bills with stolen credit card details.
  Retailers need to store credit cards to issue refunds on returns. After that time period, I think they should delete the info. In reality, it can be tricky to clean up all references to data.
  
  --
  Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
6. Re:It's about time by Man+On+Pink+Corner · 2011-03-16 09:24 · Score: 2
  
  You have to draw the line somewhere, but the whole notion that online retailers insist upon saving your credit information is absurd.
  Meh. You're talking about something that goes wrong about 0.001% of the time... and in cases of outright fraud, the consumer typically isn't even held responsible by their credit card issuer.
  Here's a radical idea: how about if parents try applying some actual discipline? Before making online commerce less convenient for everyone else, can we try that and see if it works?
7. Re:It's about time by BitZtream · 2011-03-16 09:41 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  No, they don't. They need the transaction id, nothing more.
  I know, we do CC transactions all the time and never have a CC number longer than the time it takes for a web page to pass it off to authorize.net. We can still easily refund the transaction or adjust the value down if need be.
  There are also methods for recurring billing that do basically the same thing, we get a reference ID, at the end of the billing period we send a 'bill these reference IDs for the price determined when the reference was setup' and they return a list of successful and unsuccessful transactions.
  Authorize.NET handles all the work for us, allowing us to not be bound by all the rules of PCI and not having to worry so much about what happens if your DB gets hacked, we have no CC numbers for anyone to steal.
  
  --
  Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
8. Re:It's about time by maxume · 2011-03-16 09:48 · Score: 2
  
  I'm probably an asshole, but any kids I end up having will be enjoying buying left and right and up and down on their etch-a-sketch, not buying virtual food for their cartoon friends.
  
  --
  Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
9. Re:It's about time by ptbarnett · 2011-03-16 09:51 · Score: 2
  
  The one requirement to signing up was that you needed to use a genuine credit card, not a bank-backed credit/debit card but a genuine going-into-debt card. What's the difference? The real credit card won't stop you from spending beyond your limit; ergo they get their money no matter what even if you can't technically afford it.
  The rental car companies have the exact same requirement: You must make the reservation with a credit card, although you can eventually pay the bill with a debit card. The reason was so they could put a hold on enough funds to cover the payment plus the damages if you totaled the car (note this is not the value of the entire car, but the limited "deductible" you agree to in the contract).
  Very often, when they put a hold on this amount on a debit card, it pushed the underlying checking account into overdraft, or at least locked up enough funds that the card holder couldn't use the card for anything else. With a credit card, this doesn't cause problems unless the cardholder has nearly maxed out their credit limit.
  Perhaps Blockbuster was putting a hold on the amount of money needed to replace the game if it wasn't returned? With a debit card, they would have encountered the problem I described above, albeit on a lesser magnitude.
Not really a parenting issue... by Darkness404 · 2011-03-16 08:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

I really don't see how this is much of a parenting issue. Many kids have an iPod touch just like they might have a GameBoy or DS. The problem is that in-game purchases are too integrated into the game and it is feasible that a kid playing a game might not fully realize that this is going to be charged real money. Ideally what Apple would do would be when you set up your device in iTunes, you can create a "gift card only" account on it that would only bill gift cards and wouldn't buy something without enough store credit. So kids could still download free apps and spend their gift cards on apps/DLC but without the fear of it charging their parent's credit card.

--
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
1. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by DdJ · 2011-03-16 09:04 · 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.
2. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2011-03-16 09:10 · Score: 2
  
  I really don't see how this is much of a parenting issue.
  Maybe it's because I'm older than you, but I was taught rather sternly not to mess with the phone because of the risk of long-distance charges being added. Seems like a better solution than bitching to the phone company about it.
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
3. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by gfreeman · 2011-03-16 09:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I really don't see how this is much of a parenting issue. ... a kid playing a game might not fully realize that this is going to be charged real money.
  Sounds TOTALLY like a parenting issue to me.
  See those candies in the store? Not the store's job to tell the kid they need real money to buy them.
  If you haven't taught your kids to appreciate real money yet, then they shouldn't be in the position to spend real money without your supervision.
  
  --
  Ceci n'est pas un sig.
4. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by vlm · 2011-03-16 09:18 · Score: 2
  
  Ideally what Apple would do would be when you set up your device in iTunes, you can create a "gift card only" account on it that would only bill gift cards and wouldn't buy something without enough store credit. So kids could still download free apps and spend their gift cards on apps/DLC but without the fear of it charging their parent's credit card.
  Grats, you've described the exact set up my son has for my old 3G ipod touch (the one with the incredible 45 minute battery life coincidentally right after IOS 4 upgrade). It was pretty trivial to set up.
  Disadvantage is when you go to the store and see those giant racks of gift cards, he always wants to buy an itunes gift card. I suppose its healthier that fast food gift cards.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
5. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by Anubis+IV · 2011-03-16 09:20 · Score: 2
  
  The problem is that in-game purchases are too integrated into the game and it is feasible that a kid playing a game might not fully realize that this is going to be charged real money.
  Not really, no.
  As I recall from the last in-app purchase I made, it's actually a rather jarring break (intentionally so, I believe), and is not nearly as integrated as you claim. You have to go through a few rounds of pop-up notifications, each one saying that you WILL be charged, dictating the amount, and asking whether or not you are certain, not to mention that someone has to enter the password at least that first time (and now, every time). It's pretty far from One-Click type of transactions, and it breaks out of the UI for whatever app you're in, so it should be apparent what is happening.
  Unless you're dealing with a pre-literate child, there's no excuse and no room for them to claim ignorance or innocence. This is a parenting issue that Apple is fixing for parents with poorly raised kids.
6. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by Darkness404 · 2011-03-16 09:22 · Score: 2
  
  If you haven't taught your kids to appreciate real money yet, then they shouldn't be in the position to spend real money without your supervision.
  
  Which is exactly what this fixes. That kids can't spend real money without your permission. It is a technical issue. Apple has the capability to fix loopholes that allow kids to spend real money without their parents permission and they should fix them.
  
  The problem in this super-connected age is that there are fewer and fewer ways that allow kids to explore 'real' technology without the risk of accidentally purchasing some DLC. Especially when its on a cell phone with an always-on internet connection.
  
  --
  Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
7. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2011-03-16 09:34 · Score: 2
  
  I think that in this case what Apple did was perfectly reasonable. It was simple to implement and it makes it a bit more secure. The underlying issue, though, is that you cannot child-proof the world.
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
8. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by drtsystems · 2011-03-16 10:14 · Score: 2
  
  This is good for everyone. I remember back in the non smartphone days everyone always being scared of the phone because it might charge you for doing something. The people who wouldn't read text messages because they thought it would cost them money (when in fact it already had just due to the fact that you received it), not wanting to change a ringtone, etc. etc. And the thing was, it was based in truth. You press the center button on a non AT&T smartphone and boom your on the internet. Racking up per kilobyte data charges. Want to shut off internet? Well it also shuts off your ability to send MMS messages.
  Apple getting away from this is a GOOD thing. You used to have to enter a credit card number every time you purchased something. It is not good for anyone to be able to do it with a single click. It is just too easy and to be spending money. A password is a great way of saying "hold on and think about what your about to do."
  Yes, good parenting is teaching kids about how to watch out for scams, etc. It is not giving your 5 year old your checkbook and then sending them out on the street and yelling at them when someone takes advantage of them and they get ripped off. Which is basically what iTunes was doing.
9. Re:Not really a parenting issue... by Kjella · 2011-03-16 10:25 · Score: 2
  
  No, if you have just entered your password (like, because you have just bought a new game and handed the iPhone to the kid) they'll not get any password prompt. It'll be a buy button and it buys, plain and simple. From what I gather that also resets your timeout so kids could play it for a long time racking up charges. It's far from obvious to a child that it's real money and not just fake money - I don't use real dollars when I "buy" something in Monopoly...
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Followup Story. by 0100010001010011 · 2011-03-16 09:00 · Score: 2

Apple iOS update blamed for 90% reduced revenue for small game developers.
40% of small game developers have gone out of business since this change.
BAD APPLE.
Re:Careful... by ackthpt · 2011-03-16 09:02 · Score: 2

Exactly. I've been saying that iProducts are weapons of mass extinction events for years, but people just wouldn't listen.
No... The dinosaurs had less sampled, repetitive and mind-numbing music, so their brains woke up and started to function.
The first thing they did was realize they didn't get along with each other.
The second thing they did was become polarized politically.
The third thing they did was elect that stupid diplodocus from Gondwanaland as President.
The forth thing they did was a huge military build up.
The fifth thing they did was use it against themselves.
Meanwhile, the early mammals saw this coming and hid in their burrows until it was all over.

--

A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Before all you ABA haters get in a tissy... by romanval · 2011-03-16 09:03 · 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?
1. Re:Before all you ABA haters get in a tissy... by MrQuacker · 2011-03-16 09:23 · Score: 2
  
  That was actually a legitimate lawsuit. The coffee was served at scalding temperatures, and truly was a safety issue.
Accountability by jklovanc · 2011-03-16 09:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

What ever happened to parents holding their children, and themselves for that matter, accountable for their actions. In any child of mine purchased anything online without my permission I would make them work to pay the charges. Maybe it will teach the children the value of money. Maybe it will also teach parents to log out of iTunes before handing the phone over to someone else. In my mind this is no different than logging into one's bank account and the letting a child play on the computer without logging out.
Those darn Smurfberries... by Reverand+Dave · 2011-03-16 09:23 · Score: 2

...will get you every time.

--
I got here through a series of tubes
Questions and Answers by martin-boundary · 2011-03-16 09:31 · Score: 2

How about an opening screen with multiple choice questions to verify the kid's age? It's, like, totally foolproof!
Who was banned from "Saturday Night Live" because he lost a telephone poll?
a. John Belushi
b. Dan Akroyd
c. Chevy Chase
d. Andy Kaufman
Mork was from the planet
a. Ork.
b. Vulcan.
c. Krypton.
d. Pluto.
A nehru jacket is
a. made from tanned nehru hides.
b. out of date.
c. a Middle Eastern prophylactic.
d. around a car's radiator.
If a physician were stranded on a desert island with Bo Derek, he would probably
a. build a boat.
b. take two aspirins.
c. overcharge her.
d. thank God.
More here.
No, THIS is how you do it: by Chicken_Kickers · 2011-03-16 12:18 · Score: 2
- Step 1: Get Kid's iPod Touch/iPhone
- Step 2: Take it away
- Step 3: Say, "you will not get to use this again until you can prove to me that you are responsible with spending money."
This is Parenting 101, whether it is conch shells, cocoa beans, pieces of eight or virtual dollars. Teach them to be mature humans, not depend on technology to babysit them.