Slashdot Mirror
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!
Purchases do require a password. The problem is, which the summary left out, the kid knew his dad's password. Because of this, all of the iOS protections that exist to stop excessive IAPs were bypassed with the password.
I set up an Apple ID for my nephew on iTunes with an AppleTV and iPad he received for christmas. His parents asked me to set it up properly because they'd heard all the horror story rumors about how you needed a credit card.
You just sign up for the account and select NONE when you make the account. YOU DO NOT NEED TO PROVIDE A PAYMENT METHOD AT ALL FIRST TIME.
I did this just two days ago.