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Apple Moves To Stop Kids Racking Up iTunes Bills
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."
...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."
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."
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.
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?
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.
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
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
No its not, its providing an ALTERNATIVE to what might become bad behavior.
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