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Federal Court Allows Class-Action Suit Against Apple Over In-App Purchases
suraj.sun writes "An iPhone-owner whose daughter downloaded $200 worth of 'Zombie Toxin' and 'Gems' through in-app purchases on his iPhone has been allowed to pursue a class action suit against Apple for compensation of up to $5m. Garen Meguerian of Pennsylvania launched the class-action case against Apple in April 2011 after he discovered that his nine-year-old daughter had been draining his credit card account through in-app purchases on 'free' games including Zombie Cafe and Treasure Story. This month, Judge Edward J Davila in San Jose District Federal Court has allowed the case to go to trial, rejecting Apple's claim that the case should be dismissed. Meguerian claimed that Apple was unfairly targeting children by allowing games geared at kids to push them to make purchases. He describes games that are free to play but require purchases of virtual goods to progress as 'bait apps' and says they should not be aimed at children."
I thought that to confirm any in-app purchase, you had to re-enter your password for your Apple ID.
Is this not the case with some apps?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's what most people will get - coupons for future app purchases. The lawyers, of course will get plenty of cash.
Back in middle school I ran up a $200 phone bill on my dad's phone line calling some 900 numbers (bet you can guess which kind). Kids emptying their parent's wallets through stupidity is nothing new. If we're going to start having regulations on "child-targetted" applications and games, it's just a step away from the sort of anti-video-game legislation we're all so worried about. Sucks to be dad, should have set a PIN on your phone.
... the apple macbook fragrance for $5mil
smells like victory
Apple is not the one "selling" the apps and then charging with IAP, the software developers are.
It also happens in Facebook, and desktop, heck.... Valve has been doing it for a while with Team Fortress 2.
So why go after Apple?
Don't take me wrong, I really hope this case goes somewhere. I hate the Free2Play model where they take advantage of ignorant kids or people with compulsive behaviors. I just feel this lawsuit is miss-directed, Zynga and it's peers are the ones that should be targeted.
I will not oppose, though, if Apple decides or is forced to remove "consumable" IAP from the app store, or force apps that require them to charge an up-front fee that removes the visibility advantage these pocket predators have by being free up-front.
The guy wants 5 million dollars because his daughter spent $200? If I had done that I would've lost use of the iPhone and would have to mow lots of lawns to pay them back. Whatever happened to parenting?
Apple moving from underage workers to underage customers.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
He describes games that are free to play but require purchases of virtual goods to progress as 'bait apps' and says they should not be aimed at children."
I agree completely. However, I think it's a parent's responsibility to ensure apps their children use are suitable. If this parent did not do this then that's their fault. I am very conscious of what apps my children use and I vet them all.
Apple is not responsible for what your children do - you are.
On the one hand I think parents should police what their kids are doing. But is it required for them to play every game themselves and make sure it isn't one can easily charge you money? Answer that for yourself but don't be too knee-jerk about how nobody wants to take responsibility for themselves anymore.
On the other hand I hate these "bait"/"Freeium" apps that have taken over. They are a blight on the gaming world imho. Some people like getting something for free. I'd rather pay a little and know thats the final amount and get a finished game. The whole sell a partial game/buy DLC to finish it is crap.
On the other other hand I have little sympathy for Apple as they are absurdly lawsuit happy, plus they love to step on the little guy which I've never been a fan of.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
You let a machine babysit your child, that machine happened to be connected to your Credit Card, blame the software for the fault... profit
Only in America
Next thing you know he'll be after those candy companies which push sweets into the mouths of babes with their flashy kid-focused advertising and low, low prices.
Sounds like another good example of people wanting the world to do their parenting for them. "My kid's doing something I don't like, and you're helping them do it! This is all your fault!" No, we're not stopping them, and neither are you. Keeping a handle on what your kids do is your responsibility, not mine. Start being a more responsible parent.
You gave them the password to your cc-bound account, you didn't effectively train them in what is acceptable and what is not, and you didn't keep track of their purchases. You failed start, middle, and end. You denied your responsibility, expecting "someone else" to take care of your child for you, and now you are responsible for the outcome. I'm glad to see this go to court. This way it will (assuming sanity prevails) establish better precedent for this sort of irresponsibility we read about from time to time.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
On the one hand, this looks like a typical ambulance chaser lawsuit, with fairly ridiculous demands being made, given the amount of "damage" that was actually inflicted. $200 vs. $5m - come on?
On the other hand, enabling the kid to easily (?) waste that much money via an iOS app is of course not o.k. on the part of Apple, given that nowadays you cannot expect that a commodity article like a smartphone will not end up being extensively used by minors. So the OS has to have reasonable safeguards. And, to be fair to them, it does have quite a number of them. Just apparently not enough of them.
Apple has also been accumulating quite a lot of bad karma for the heavy-handed, intransparent and sometimes downright brainless way they run their iOS walled garden. It stands to reason that quite a lot of people are probably trying to get "even" with them nowadays, just out of spite. So this lawsuit is just one of many, I would guess.
Unrelated (but then again, not *so* unrelated) example of how minors are "protected" in the walled garden:
Apps are apparently flagged as 17+ if they meet a variety of criteria. One of these is apparently price - anything above a certain $$$ is automatically 17+. Fair enough... except that there is only one 17+ category. And the more common reason for something being 17+ is of course... well, you guessed it.
This has led to iGlide Pro, the more expensive pro version of a very nice moving map application for soaring from Butterfly Aero, being classified as 17+. So the info tab for that app in iTunes now reads "frequent nudity" as one of the characteristics of the app. WTF? Nudity? In a moving map application that you use in a glider during flight? Sometimes, it's the little experiences like that which have the potential to ruin the reputation of a company for being capable of doing things properly. If they visibly don't care about things that make them look like asses, what about the other things you can't see?
This was an obvious case of targeting children. It reminds me of an old case with Soupy Sales asking kids to send him green pieces of paper from their parent's wallets. It was meant as a joke but he got in a lot of trouble. Snopes has a great quote on this subject. I can't copy the paragraph but it starts out "It's easy for those .........."Captain Midnight". The paragraph does an excellent job of stating how corporations have always preyed on children.
http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/soupy1.asp
I think the biggest problem isn't the idea that apps created to get money through upgrades exist, but the fact that a nine-year old is given the powers of an expensive phone without the parents having a clue as to what she's doing on it is eyebrow-raising. Am I the only one bugged out when I see middle-schoolers having phones and other gadgets that are worth more than my car? Criminy, my mom wouldn't let me have a phone in my room on the main home line, never mind my OWN phone number.
And as if she didn't know she was doing wrong. Even if a child is immature in the areas of reasoning, I'm assuming any parent here would punish their kid if they found them digging into their wallet to steal cash. How is this any different? You put a LOCK on that shit, wherein any purchases made on your child's phone has to be approved by an adult first. I'm sure there's a method/service that does that. I almost never take the side of corporations like Apple, but in this case, I say the kid is grounded for six months, and double the chores in the house without an allowance. They had their fun, underhandedly. Time for parents to take responsibility for the stuff they buy their kids, especially if they don't intrinsically NEED it to begin with.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Before people go nuts defending holy Apple, Apple appears to have played a bad system to their favour.
The system is the billing. I suspect that those in-game purchases were lumped together making it
harder to actually identify what they were. If they were bundled with a iTunes purchase, you may look
at the bill and think "I bought those 96kilobit songs then, that's what it must be."
Rather than honestly noting each in-game purchase on the bill (even separated by 5 seconds) this
billing choice purposely confuses the consumer. And yes, the technology exists for fine granularity of
documenting of these purchases - it was ignored.
This is no different than AOL's months to cancel; rebates that never are rebated, and hundred of other
legal scams out there. I hope he's successful in court.
.. Ask for a refund. I used to be a iTS T1 agent. This was common and refunds were made without any questions if people knew who made the purchase (if they didn't, it became credit card fraud)
Then the folks who bought these iPhones for their kids should not of used their Apple ID. Furthermore, it is the parents responsibility to control their children's actions. Leave a kid with an iPhone tied to a credit card what do you think is going to happen?
or some system where free stuff should need all kinds of pop ups that paid ones do.
The old SA cable box software had stuff like that where the free VOD made you view a buy screen with price of $0.
The directv software does not have screen like that on the free VOD and only the pay stuff has the do you want to buy pop up.
some games used to hide the real money part or make it seem like in game cash. Now they have to use the IOS / system screens to use real money.
Now a game can make it seem like you are buying with in game funds. Now think what in back in the day with simcity 2000 the loans ended costing real money and they did ticks to hide that.
I'm a technical guy. You can bet if I owned an iPhone I'd know all the settings inside and out. However, it's not reasonable to expect a non-technical user of a technical device to know every setting on the phone, or even that the settings exist.
Also...I'm a parent of two small boys. They don't get a lot of TV, and they don't get a lot of time with electronic devices, but sometimes it's fun to let them play with something for a few minutes--in fact, my mom gives them her iPhone a few times a month as a treat.
It is not reasonable to expect that the kids are 100% supervised every minute of every day, and my 3-year-old can fire up his favorite games in a few seconds, so it's not too far-fetched to consider that a kid might be able to incur significant costs without the parent being a douchebag.
Why be a good parent when you can just sue someone else for being incompetent at it?
Good role model there too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If the RIAA can make absurd demands, why not this guy? Why should corporations have an exclusive right to abuse our nation's courts?
In all seriousness, this whole situation is ridiculous. If this guy is not willing to hand his 9 year old a credit card, why is he willing to hand her a phone that can make charges to his credit card? I am no apologist for Apple, but I am not seeing how Apple is at fault here. This is like claiming that somehow, if a 9 year old is given a credit card and allowed to do whatever she wants in MacDonalds, it is MacDonalds' fault if the child runs up a huge bill.
Now, if this guy could show that Apple had tried to market a version of the iPhone for children, without making it clear that that particular version of the iPhone could be used to make charges to the parents' credit card without first requiring the permission of the parents, he might have a case. Except that is not what happened here.
Palm trees and 8
If Apple (or Disneyland, or anyone else) wants to have a walled garden where you have to play by their rules to get in there, then they have to be liable for what people find there. If you slip on the wet sidewalk at Disneyland that will be totally different than if you do that outside the park. By requiring developers to pass a stringent test and have each app approved, they are explicitly saying they approve of these sorts of apps. In fact, they are even approving that these apps can go in the children's section.
That is why Apple is vulnerable here but Android is not. Android doesn't force developers to do anything special. There is no endorsement, so no liability.
In terms of the settings thing, that is all well and good. But the fact is that Apple is making huge profits from parents who are buying iPods and iPads specifically because Apple has presented their walled garden as a safe place. Remember the famous quote from Steve Jobs to the blogger, saying that Apple is free from crap and if you want porn or viruses, you should go to Android? Well, the chickens have come home.
Any normal standard would find the business practice of these apps unethical anyway. Have you ever "played" one? This is not "my kid purchased a new champion in League of Legend by accident". These apps are specifically designed to be deceptive and manipulative for children.
I have in app purchases turned off and protected but then again, I'm not stupid.
Can't you turn off in app purchases on the iPhone? I have it turned off almost all the time and let the kids use it because I know they can't make these kinds of purchases. I don't even want to make these kind of purchase myself. If it's a setting in the iPhone, then someone should tell the guy.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
Except for a few select use cases such as magazine and books, in app purchasing is simply a lame option.
A much better alternative would be to simply allow a short time period to "return" an app, only billing perhaps an hour after download. In this situation a user has the ability to download several apps and try them all out, and return all but the best. It would create a race to the top on quality instead of a race to the bottom on price. Average selling price of quality apps would likely go up. While a dollar or two is not much, it adds up quick if you must choose between one of 20 similar apps. Since buying 20 apps is not an option, good developers either make a watered down "free" version for testing and/or create add ons via in app purchases. Greedy developers simply use in app purchases to fleece.
At the risk of get flamed here, would love them to actually do away with in App purchases except for specific use cases that make sense. All the i devices in our family have in app purchases turned off, and the setting password protected.
I did some stupid things as a kid that cost my parents at least $200 of 1970's money. They did not sue anyone.
but I always felt like in-app purchases were a turd. I never download anything that has them, it's just a new kind of "crippleware" which is a shit user experience. Apple should've banned the fuckers. Maybe this lawsuit will give them an excuse to end this awful "feature".
before apple fixed it with parental controls.
Though what i have always wondered about the age of "in app purchases" is how much of them go through the "store/market" and not the app provider's billing crew. Seems like it would give the opportunity for any app maker that uses their own billing system to remove barriers that would require authentication or even notification of purchases. Think if your information is given in app to "unlock the full version" instead of the "app/market" now the EULA for adding that information may bring the ability for the application to bill as you go. Lets look at an example I buy the hot bird flinger game everyone seems obsessed about and supply in app my information to buy new explosive birds. Awesome now i can explode the feathery smirking bastards. Sweet boom! save the day. What the ending to the game wasn't the end? Lets grab that new level by clicking "continue exploding birds in the sun" a new 20$ addon with more bird types! Awesome! No where does it say the content is DLC and will be charged. it just loads and continues... and now you have a seamless operation of pumping sales and technically having already informed the customer at the initial purchase somewhere in the EULA that some continuations of levels could be dlc. Bam there you have something that could be considered... well i'm not sure malicious is the right word but i'm sure slashdot has some better suggestions...but that is how i've been noticing all of these "in app purchases" with zenonia, and many other games. Even after purchasing the "full version" there are a ton of ad-dons and "bonuses" that seem to just crop out of nowhere...i initially though it was just an unfinished game or the devs just "forgot" to put that content in there but it could be more.
This wouldn't happen if you had to link out to a webpage and signup for the service and provide the information first; in Apple trying to make things so easy and simple they also make it prone to things like this; a toddler learning to read could buy up items for a game. You don't have this problem on PC mmorpg's that are free to play because they don't have any of your payment information until you decide to buy something, then you have to enter it all manually, they don't just get it from some encrypted file on the system so you can buy things from the get go. Also; whatever happened to parental supervision? Or teaching kids to be honest and responsible? Why was she buying things in the game without asking? Why didn't Daddy pay some attention that his kid was buying things indescriminately? Oh, because Apple makes it "too easy". Indeed they do, and some kid isn't going to read the fine print when they go to the ingame shop and see pay items alongside free ingame money items. And with Apple taking their huge 30% cut of revenue, developers are forced to gouge customers and be deceptive like this. Apple needs to put some policy changes inplace to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen easily or without people knowing. Doesn't iOS have some kind of parental controls restricting inapp purchases? If it was the parents device I can see it not being enabled, but why not have an option for a unprivilaged user profile on the device? Perhaps a secondary option on the lock screen, so parents could have sortof a profile for their children on the device, they could choose which apps to enable, the profile would have it's own password so if the phone is lost or stolen it still can't be super easily accessed (at least not by someone who is dumb enough and low enough to steal it). Just don't tell the kid your own password, so they go to the lockscreen and enter theirs and then they can do the things you enable, you could have a spending quota for inapp purchases and itunes, and optionally require confirmation on the parent account or through email before a transaction is done. Things like that, and a policy changes on developers (for example, in games selling items, pay items or content must be clearly labeled as such and require more then just a tap of a buy button, and can't be shown on the same screen or list with free items. Perhaps have that adhere to a system option like "restrict inapp purchasing" which, if enabled, would cause games using the inapp purchase system to show those things greyed out and inaccessible to buy, again this could all tie up to parental controls and limited user profiles)
Well, if this doesn't show how totally screwed up the US legal system has become, I don't know what will. How the fuck can you claim $5 *MILLION* in compensation over a $200 in-app purchase?!? Where is the harm? Did the child or parent lose their mind over this and get institutionalized for life? At best, they should be entitled to a refund on the purchases and little else. Perhaps throw in a gift card good for $100 of future purchases.
I agree that in-app purchases are a risk, but this was clearly preventable.
This just blows the mind. The courts should not allow this abuse of the legal system and consequent waste of tax dollars. There is no justification for the compensation claim.
It's obvious most of the people on this forum have no children. I had a similar circumstance where my child rang up $500 in in-app purchases. When I bought the 99 cemt app, I read all the fine print and it said nothing about in-app purchases. Keep in mind, this is a child's game where you run around finding jewels or something. You can level up using found jewels. However, at some levels, in the same screen, you can purchase the level up using real money instead of jewels. The only difference is a dollar sign instead of the jewel icon next to your item. This is misleading, especially to a child that has no concept of money.
Even worse, I tried to get a refund from the game developer and they referred me to the Apple Store. The Apple store links were circular, so there was no way to report the problem. (The Report a Problem page had a link that sent me to the Support page. To report a problem on the Support page there was a link to the Report a Problem page.) Luckily, my Apple Store account was linked to Paypal so I got a refund there.
Afterwards, I did some research and found out you can turn off in-app purchases, which I have now done. However, on this iPad, I have to go back and turn it on when I want to make a purchase, since the iPad does not have the ability to create separate user accounts.
I'm a lawyer and thought this would be a good class action suit. I'm glad to see someone has done it.
You see, that 5 mil is for getting "the money back" for thousands of people. This is why it's called a "class action": not just one person, but a whole classification of users (the ones who need to get their money back).
Of course, you love apple and therefore this is Just Plain Wrong.
Then again, you're an arsehole.
But this is a CLASS ACTION suit for a CAP of $5mil.
If he wins, and if nobody else joins, then he'll get the whatever thousands that is deemed appropriate recompense (remember: if I steal your stuff, I don't get out of trouble with the police by giving it back when I'm convicted of burgulary), the lawyer gets paid, and the rest either goes back to apple or to the court (again, punishing burglars by putting them in Jail AS WELL AS making them give it all back).
Now please try reading this, but put "Microsoft" or, better, "Google" in the place of Apple.
Now see whether you're as angry over it.
I worked at Apple Technical Support for a year for iPhone, iPad, and iPod and all he needs to do is contact Apple and they will refund it. They should then tell how to disable this from happening in the future (disable In-App Purchases in apps). The problem is that it is the developers doing this, not Apple. It is a feature that some developers are using in a malicious way to target young children into spending their parents money but others use it properly. Kids shouldn't have a credit card attached to the account anyways, they should have iTunes gift cards put on the account as a sort of allowance. I saw this issue a couple of hundred of times when working at iPhone tech support but as much as I disliked Apple (I am a Linux/Android person, it was a temporary job) I wouldn't blame them for this issue. This could equally happen on almost any platform. From what I understand Farmville and all of those silly games have things similar though people might claim "The payment information is seperate!" but really most people I know who would end up in this situation would use the same account/password for everything therefore if the kid can make these in-app purchases on an iPod/iPhone/iPad then they could equally make them on a PC game that would have things like that if it used Paypal or any other payment method to approve transactions.
Also, if your kid took your credit card to WalMart and bought a lot of toys, would you sue WalMart for targetting toy markets at kids? Would you sue the toy manufacturers for it? You most likely would try to return them and get the issue resolved on your credit/debit card and then speak to your child about it. Maybe people need to speak to their kids more.
There's a setting that disables in-app purchases - which you can password protect. Even if that's not set, you need to enter your iTunes password to authorize them.
If this guy failed to turn off in-app purchases AND gave his special snowflake his iTunes password, then she could run up a bill. Anyone see the problem here?
It's just another gold digger looking at Apple as a source of a big payday.
I'd go through his twitters to see if he posted anything damaging his own case. Garen Meguerian is also a lawyer. If he's an attorney complaining about a $200 bill, you know business MUST be slow and he's doing what any lawyer with bills piling up would due: sue.
Not all IOS devices are the same. The Ipad allows parents to set enable restrictions which prevent downloading of any application and prevent in app purchases. When I let my kid use the ipad I use these restrictions and I DO NOT DIVULGE my password to her. When it comes to the ipad I have no sympathy for parents. Anyone who lets a child use a technological device should have full understanding of the security and financial risks associated with that device.
An ipod touch for instance does not allow a parent to set any restrictions. This means that while an ipod touch seems like the perfect ios device for a child, being less expensive but able to run most of the same apps, it is financially risky for a child because there is no way to turn off bad behavior. As a responsible parent I will get my
kid an ipod touch.
I see too many people blame others for their own lazyness and stupidity. People expect everything to be done for them hassle free. Well I'm sorry to say but you can't drive a car without having learned to drive. Why should it be different for anything else? Understand what your doing instead of just clicking OK without thinking. Anyhow, it's not like Apple sold them poison labeled as candy. These people need to take this mistake as a life lesson and move on. The kid shouldn't be spanked, the parent should!!!
...don't store your payment information in the Apple Store.