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Kid Racks Up $5,900 Bill Playing Jurassic World On Dad's iPad (pcmag.com)
theodp writes: For Mohamed Shugaa, the scariest Jurassic World creature is perhaps Apple CEO Tim Cook, not the Indominus Rex. That's because Shugaa discovered his 7-year-old son had managed to rack up a $5,900 bill playing the Jurassic World game on his iPad in six days. "Why would Apple think I would be spending thousands of pounds on buying dinosaurs and upgrading a game," Shugaa told The Metro. "Why didn't they email me to check I knew these payments were being made? I got nothing from them. How much longer would it have gone on for?" Shugaa discovered his son's 65 in-app purchases when a payment he tried to make to a business supplier was declined. His son had upgraded dinosaurs using the game currency 'Dino Bucks' without realizing it was charging his Dad in real money. The good news is that Apple has decided to refund the money, so the kid doesn't have to worry about Apple making him work 8,500 hours for $5,980 to settle the debt. Btw, before you developers get too excited about the possibility of using In-App Purchase to take kids to the cleaners at $6,000-a-pop, remember that Apple call dibs on the first $1,800!
The game is stacked to work just as you say. Apple make billions from these accidents, and they're almost tax-free.
This has been a problem for years. So why haven't Apple set sensible limits for in-game purchase? Why don't the show how much could be spent if you download something, even if it's flagged as "free". Why don't they ask you whether you want to allow in-app purchases when something is installed, effectively overriding the system default - which let's be honest, will always favour the producer at the expense of the consumer because Apple make money from it.
Why aren't Apple using two factor authentication. If an account starts spending like a child or crook has control, why isn't the account instantly frozen? Oh yes, Apple make money from it.