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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!
You let your brat play unchecked with a credit card-enabled tablet, you deserve every bill you get.
Especially if you're too dumb to read the fine print and adjust your settings, so that these things can be avoided.
Knowing Apple, why not require that in app purchases have to actually provide you something of value beyond arbitrarily increasing counters in games?
Whenever the kids ask for a game on their tablets, as soon as it is installed, I log out of the itunes account so that they cant purchase anything more. It takes only seconds, and if this guy can't figure out how / cant be bothered to take that simple step, then he deserves to have to cough up the money. Its like they say, a fool and their money are soon parted.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
updates may need the account / password at least they do on the mac os app store and that is not the system password and it's need to update the build in apps.
the password is needed to install free stuff / maybe (some are forced) app updates as well.
Talk about naive. A seven year old absolutely needs to be supervised when using a mobile or any internet connected device. The most maddening part of this is that he seems to be expecting Apple to babysit his kid.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
From 2014: Apple to pay $32.5m over practice that let children make in-app purchases http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/15/apple-practice-children-make-in-app-purchases
CEO Tim Cook says deal 'smacks of double jeopardy'
Federal Trade Commission to provide full refund to customers
“However, the consent decree the FTC proposed does not require us to do anything we weren’t already going to do, so we decided to accept it rather than take on a long and distracting legal fight,” Cook said.
As part of the agreement, Apple must change its purchasing process to ensure consumers give full consent when purchasing items in mobile apps. In-app items can range from 99 cents to $99.99 per item.
The FTC said Apple failed to inform consumers that they could be approving in-app purchases by entering a password on their device. After entering the password, users then had a 15-minute window where unlimited purchases could be made without further action taken by users.
iOS needs a setting that is do not ask for password to install free apps only ask to BUY SOMETHING THAT COSTS REAL $.
But then people would actually notice how much money they spend!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
only if the arcade needed a CC to play a free game that also made it very easy to buy stuff that costs $$ that is not needed to play the free parts.
.
Instead, the Dad should take responsibility for letting a child use a device without knowing how and for what purpose that child is using the device.
This is nothing but a lack of parental responsibility.
Missed the part that the same password was needed to get the free apps and there was a time where you needed a CC just to get a apple ID.
Not sure what Apple's current limit on a single in-app purchase is, but I thought it was $99.99. I've not seen an F2P game with a larger in-app purchases than that, and many don't go that high. So to spend $6k, you'd have to make at least 60 purchases of the highest-priced in-game-currency pack. Either very rapidly after a password had been entered, or with the password entered multiple times, before buying more.
The smart child had memorized his father's Apple ID password
A password was required to make an in-game purchase, and even if the father entered it himself, that only works for 15 minutes. How is it Apple's fault that the kid memorized the guy's password?
My question is why would hand a child a device to 'play' with that is tied to a system authorized to make payments? I realize all kinds of people do that every day but its still stupid. You would not hand your kid a wad of cash to used building a house of cards, why would you hand them a computer with credit information embedded?
Both IOS and Android can be set so you at least have to enter your Apple / Google password to make a purchase. If your device isn't set to lock itself with a short timeout or you ever hand it to anyone you can't trust entirely (like your spouse) then you absolutely should have the password for ordering functions on! It is true that the result is this also requires the password for free stuff, but there again if you can't be arsed to manage the entertainment software on your phone for your kid, you probably should get them their own device like maybe a PSP or their own phone with no credit card info associated.
Frankly this is an expensive lesson but this day should pay up and learn it well.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This is maybe the shittiest article I've seen posted to Slashdot in a long time, and that's saying something.
First, why does the blame fall to Tim Cook of all people instead of the developers of the game?
Second, Apple has already set up a Family Sharing system to prevent just this sort of thing. Never mind the fact that your have to give your kid your password to the account tied to a credit card for this to happen in the first place.
http://www.apple.com/icloud/fa...
To say nothing of the fact that in the article itself they said Apple refunded him the money. But yeah, they're assholes because he doesn't know not to give your kid access to your credit card.
Finally throw in a dash of globalization scare tactics and remind developers that they *only* get 70% of the IAP revenue, which they know about already, and you've got the Slashdot Shithead Trifecta.
Schnapple
Dad: "Hey VISA, I didn't authorize this. Charge back." There. Now it's someone else's problem.
Honest question: doesn't it work like this? If the app or the OS (whatever's in charge) is both storing the credentials and also not taking common-sense measures to authenticate people who try to use those credentials, I'd think chargebacks would be an extremely common occurrence. Isn't this happening? If not, why not?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
and hear what the man-children of Slashdot have to say about it!
Based on your comment history, Slashdot would be better without you. You call the people here children when it seems that your go-to move is to personally attack people. Go away.
Steam requires you to reenter your credit card CVC if you've been making a lot of purchases recently. Apple could do something similar.
First there's a way to adjust the password settings on iPads: Settings > iTunes and App Store > Password Settings. Set it to Always Require for paid apps and in app purchases and Do not require for free downloads. But that's all moot in this case because the kid did know the password and the account is linked to a credit card. It's like he gave his son key to the gun cabinet and later blame the gun manufacturer when the kid hurts himself. Bad bad parenting. The article also mentioned that he should received several email receipts for these purchases. That's Apple's way of reaching out to him and say "something is suspicious". What does he really want? A police officer knocking on his door telling him that there have been big charges on his CC?
In the end though, Apple did reimburse him all the money what else is left to grunge about? Had he given his kid an Android, the situation would have been the same: kids swipe the parent's CC clean. I have no doubt Google would promptly reimburse him, just like Apple did. However, this article was written only because it involved Apple.
The source article said the kid had the father's password and used it to make purchases.
What, like this and this ? Via Settings > General > Restrictions
Then you could do a DoS attack on every iPad/iPhone you get into your hands.
Just download as much apps as you can: memory full, no mails can be received anymore, data plan wrecked ... etc.
No idea why so many people always think: the default way how Apple is running stuff is wrong (same idiots who always complain that programming Java is to complicated because Sun 'invented' to many Exceptions)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I feel IMHO should be banned on any game targeting an audience below 12 years old. At the very least in-app purchases above a certain amount or accumulated amount should require external authentication, to prevent this exact scenario.
As for the 'in-app purchase are evil' subject, it is because you'll frequently get a free app and then find it goes on to nickel-and-dime the whole experience. What is the real price of a free app with in-app purchasing? Here we saw it was potentially well above $5000. At that price $60 console games look cheap.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
65 purchases, according to one account, including $2,200 in one hour.
The real WTF is that you can possibly run up a bill that large in just 6 days with a free to pay game.
Every other news outlet covered it days ago. Slashdot is lucky to post stories within a week of them breaking.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
At least Apple has a decent refund policy for kids inappropriately incurring charges. On the other hand, Microsoft does not allow refunds for its X-Box games. I say "kudos" to Apple, and "Blahh" to Microsoft.
Know what your kid is doing on the computer/tablet/etc. It's not a trained babysitter.
Yet as a parent, I get it. We're fairly conservative, we limit screen time but it's a HUGE magnet for kids and it's easy for non-technical parents to not realize their kids can spend real money or how to block it, and kids aren't stupid, they can guess passwords. Our son figured out my wife's password (observing her typing) and ran up $90 on iTunes before we caught it. Kids are impulsive.
That being said, we paid it and made him pay us back through extra chores accounted on a big sign on the fridge and a loss of access to the iPad. We didn't ask for a refund because we owned the problem and of course getting the refund would be a time consuming headache in and of itself.
That being said, in-app purchases are bullshit. They degrade the quality of all apps by masking their true cost and lack of basic quality. Apple's controls are really weak, especially for parents, and there should be a way to set spending limits that protect the parent and the kids.
The $6k refunded by Apple is bullshit compared to the thousands of parents who have paid the $90 like us, and I'm sure Apple just knows a lot of people eat $$$ in unwanted in-app purchases and it's part of the model. They don't *want* more controls.
I'd like to see Apple eliminate in-app purchases completely. Developers should price their apps up front, release multiple versions if they want multiple price points. Shitty apps and especially games that do nothing without a ton of in-app purchases should die. I don't even bother with games at all anymore because they're all rigged to be mostly unplayable without upgrades, and I tend to avoid apps of any kind that flog upgrades via in-app purchases. It's a crappy racket.
My eldest son recently got a paid xbox live account, and his son racked up about a thousand bucks of charges in one day before my son even had a chance to set up the parental locks on the device.
He got a refund after telling them what had happened... it was still was a bit an eye-opener for him though. Really, I think that the biggest reason that things like this happen is because while it is obvious to the parent that it costs real money, it might not as obvious to the child, and it also may not be obvious that permission was even needed unless this is explicitly clarified ahead of time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Frankly this is an expensive lesson but this day should pay up and learn it well.
You don't need to pay to have the lesson well learnt. A serious near miss is enough to change a behaviour, and getting a fat bill in the mail can very quickly make people realise they were financially left open.
But the parent does have a point. While it's their own fault having their credentials handed over even a bank or a credit card company often has the ability to prevent out of pattern transactions, and quite frankly suddenly blowing $5900 on small in game purchases in a single game should trigger some kind of anti-fraud action.
the kid memorized his dad's itunes password
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
WHO demanded fee-to-play (they certainly aren't free) games? Nobody I know fucking did, and most I know hate it.
First they took local LAN play, so you could only play when online.
FTP is basically just a scam to hide the real cost of a game, be it free install or otherwise.
On tablets etc, games didn't *require* paying of course, unless your actually wanted to progress beyond a certain point.
Meanwhile on PC/console, we got unlockable "achievements", which was kinda cool until those became necessary to unlock items in the game.
Then off course, came the ability to "pay" for unlocks, so you had the ability to play 10,000h for a sniper scope or pay in order to compete with the fucking rich kids who bought them at $50
Back to tablet, oh now we're not charging you money, you get game "credits" (which of course your can purchase) to obfuscate the cost of things further.
Lastly, let us not forget DLC. What used to be legitimate add-ons a year or so after release became 0-day nickel-and-dime cash grabs to get a full game.
Tell me, when did we ask for this shit? Because it seems to me that as soon as the industry see dollar signs, every fucking game went there. EA was the biggest sell-out, but with them and other big names buying out any game studio that produces a decent product, your choices are pretty much limited to whose dick you want to take up your ass, and with how much lube (lube available in micropayments of $5/application).
Sorry, but that's not an excuse for the horribly broken design. And many people may not find out so quickly, especially if the purchases are more moderate. So I think it's clearly a scam, probably fraud, and just not provably malicious.
That many companies do this merely says that there is a lot of malicious action allowed to happen unpunished.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
On newer Android versions, you can have multiple accounts on a device. Personally, what I'd like to see in general is a "restricted" account that is tied to a master.
In the restricted accoint, kids etc can see and play their games. If they want to install something, it sends a request to the master detailing "Timmy2005 wants to install game 'Jurassic Pork' on device 'family tablet'. Rating PG. Cost $0" or "Timmy2005 wants to make a purchase via app 'Jurassic Pork' for $50, details: upgraded tyrannosaurus"
At that point, little Timmy can't complete the transaction until dad authorizes it via his account/device (with password etc).
"Why didn't they email me to check I knew these payments were being made? I got nothing from them."
Why exactly is it any company's problem that they check up on whether you are an idiot or not ? You agreed to bought the device, agreed to terms and conditions , and gave them your credit card. Now they much check if you weren't being a drooling imbecile when you did all that ?
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
https://support.apple.com/en-u... You have two password options to choose from with paid and in-app purchases: Always Require: When you make a purchase, you'll always be asked to enter your password, even if you're signed in with your Apple ID. Require After 15 Minutes: When you make a purchase, you'll be asked to enter your password only every 15 minutes. You can turn off password protection for free items on your iOS device or computer if you don't want to enter your password when downloading free songs or apps, but you can't completely turn off password protection for paid items.
Because the kid has the iPad with an email client set up. So when the query comes through from the fraud department, the kid just answers, "All is well. Pay it."
Have gnu, will travel.
You can buy "prepaid" cards to load finds for purchases made via their respective "stores".
I cannot imagine any situation where you would register a real world credit card to allow direct charges with either of them.
It's sad that people blindly accept that giving a service provider direct access to their credit card or bank account number is a suitable way to pay anything, and its what leads to situations just like this one.
My son has an iPhone. It has a preloaded balance. It CANNOT spend anymore than that. If he runs low he can ask me for a another iTunes card.
I have an Android phone. Same setup - preloaded balance that it CANNOT exceed. It does not have the ability to use anymore than the balance that I have loaded, which I (and ONLY *I*) can replenish as needed
For any service that will not bill any way OTHER than to a credit card, or for any online purchase, I use this:
https://www.bankofamerica.com/...
They probably should, just for PR reasons. Then the next time this happens, they can put out a statement saying essentially "Don't look at us. This moron told his kid his password AND told his kid his credit card number."
What gets me is the number of purchases: "65".
Which means these are worlds away from normal micro-transactions. The average payment was somewhere around $100.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
A couple of years ago Google definitely did NOT ask for a password by default. (and that after Apple has lost a case in court on remembering passwords).
So wonderful "clouds and ships" game my kid was playing managed to charge me 9.99 Euro within minutes after I've bought something from an app store USING MY BLOODY PC.
It has one. Just change the logged in store account to the kid's account. Problem solved.
Google Play had this Year's End promotion thing, and you could get Minecraft Story Mode for 0.99EUR. However, that was only episode 1 out of 5. There was no indication how much it costs to get the complete package from the storefront. There were only some user comments in the store pointing out it was around 30.00EUR. If you want to watch the whole story, you need to pay for the complete package, I am afraid.
Because the game's developers didn't write the code that handles in-app purchases.
Yes they did, you have to write a fair amount of code to support in-app purchases - Apple has an API but that doesn't do much of the messaging you need to do around making purchases or restoring them.
There is in the end a gateway where a dialog is pretty clearly presented saying you will be charged real money...
My question is why is it not really the fault of the kid? No way with the alerts that pop up did that kid not know he was spending real money, no matter how the game tries to obscure that fact.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yea, you're totally right. Taking responsibility for your actions, and those of your children is a problem.
The problem is that assholes like you think that its someone elses responsibility to parent for your children.
Grow up and be responsible for your actions, twit.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
This is the main reason that I believe Microsoft went to the tile/app Metro interface with Windows 8 and kept it in the Start menu in Windows 10. They really really want to make extra change with Store apps. While refunds occur when idiot kids charging excessively, it's still easy money and a shame for the big three to push freemium apps that can autocharge you.
The people who are complaining loudest have probably never used an IOS device, this is just a case of Apple Bashing by people who choose to be deliberately dishonest/ignorant.
The incident that caused us to worry about these (and enable passwords for everything) was an in-app subscription to Pandora. It was a PITA to figure out how to cancel it and trying to get a refund turned out to be a complicated process. I got it, but the time I spent sorting it out was definitely a money loser.
I think the $90 was spread over a half-dozen different apps and several in-app purchases, I can only imagine it would have been hours worth of work to try to get refunds for all of it.
It's just like every other systemic ripoff in life, "they" rig it for maximum complexity and frustration just to keep people from obtaining refunds. Me wasting 3-4 hours trying to get refunds for my $90 really wouldn't change the system at all.
I think what actually might would be a kind of a subterfuge campaign of deliberate multi-thousand dollar iTunes bills made public as part of a publicity campaign to demonstrate how close to a scam in-app purchases really are, especially games and especially games oriented towards kids.
It's mostly Whales. Obsessive compulsive types with mental issues. A large percentage of the revenue free to play makes comes from these folks. I think the point the Grandparent was getting at is that these games survive by taking advantage of people with varying degrees of sanity. As a society we like to think that we protect those kind of people. We don't.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
i played that game anything that cost money is clarly labeled so. the kid knew what he was doing.
Why didn't they email me to check I knew these payments were being made? I got nothing from them
Your own fault. If you set up a family group with your children, you'll get a request to authorise any purchase your kids attempt to make. Works fine, reasonably easy to set up. Stop blaming others for your own incompetence.
Apple's job isn't to enable a marketplace for entrepreneurs to build apps including facilitating in-game purchases. No, Apple's job is to watch your unsupervised kid's behavior so you aren't hurt by your unsupervised kid using your stored credit card and your enabled in-game purchases on your iPad that you gave him so you didn't have to talk to him, teach him anything, or throw a ball in the backyard.
The third thing is that in-app purchases is usually a scam.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
No, in-app purchases shouldn't be permitted at all.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
That won't work. The whole freemium (free and/or premium) model is based on the premise that a small number of big spenders (say 2% or less) are paying huge amounts for the game... the rest of the players are freeeloaders ($0 paid).
If you limit per app/per user purchase to $50, it will bankrupt the developer overnight. This problem is Apple's fault because their in-app purchase system is broken. Why does the kid have access to the credit card in the first place? There should at least be a username/password that you have to enter before making any purchases.
Last Summer we had our cousin and her two kids stay with us for a week. The boy at some point asked my wife to buy him something on his Android phone for $5, so she plugged in her payment info. He apparently saved it or she saved it accidentally. Two weeks later she noticed numerous $49.99 charges to Google Play totaling just shy of $2,000.
For one.... wtf? How do you spend $6k on a game? What kind of money grubbing whore develops a game designed to suck that much out of kids? What the fuck does a person actually get after spending 6k? The idea that a game is so heavily monetized and aimed at children says a lot about the people who developed it. Scumbags.
Don't tell me they have every right, I don't disagree. However, I have every right to judge them based on what they do with their right, and they are fucking scumbags.
Secondly, this is what you get with these walled gardens. The entire "app store" mentality which puts monetization first and foremost leads directly to this bullshit. It may drive content, but it drives shitty derivative content that does little more than provide metrics to sell the app store to new victims.
If you want your software developed by scumbags, you want an app store. If you want good developers to be drowned out by abusive copies intended to extract every last dollar from every drop of creativity out there....you want a fucking app store.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Never save credit card info on a device intended to be shared with a child.
Bankrupt them? Fine by me.
Never said it was. Is this a blaming-the-victim accusation? Broken design is a fact of life. Call it a scam but it operates within legal boundaries as far as I can tell. Best then to simply stay away, but the first tip off is mandatory credit card info. Btw it's obnoxious to preface an opinion with "sorry, but".
Good luck with that.
Right, will you be developing and offering free games instead? We don't need freemium games with their sky high prices or grinding for weeks/months for free players if you can give us free (as in beer) games. Gather some open source developers and start creating these games!
I'm thinking this is just an anti-Apple troll hard at work
That'll be why a kid managed to spend several grand on an iPad with minimal effort.
Shit, the article acknowledges that Apple refunded the expenditure. From one perspective, they're the good guys.
Of course, from another perspective they don't have too much choice, and they've also already set the precedent.
This is precisely how Google Play works. No idea why the other app markets haven't figured this basic principle out...
Solid have set it up to require a password for all transactions. Or does Apple allow that? That's what I do on Android
the password is needed to install free stuff / maybe (some are forced) app updates as well.
Updates are NEVER "Forced" on iOS.
Passwords are ALWAYS required on iOS for interactions with the App Store. The only exception is if you have already entered your Password within the past 15 minutes, AND you have changed the Default setting in iOS (the Default is to Require a Password EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.).
What is an "Anti-Apple Troll"? Like someone who says that Apple couldn't innovate themselves out of a brown paper bag without Steve Jobs & that they are now essentially the technology-company version of the headless chicken death dance?
Yep. EXACTLY like that.
Does iPad let you have two separate user accounts, like Android and Windows? As in a separate account for adult and child?
iOS doesn't have separate user accounts; but the App Store DOES.
The problem here was that the Parent gave up HIS Password to his kid.
Parent was entirely to blame, period. Apple was just nice enough to give him his money back.
So rather than being responsible, he gives his password to his son. Then he bitches when his son uses the password.
Sounds like a problem that is easily solvable: don't give your password to your son, and instead monitor what he is doing. Note, this applies to many things outside the scope of this conversation - it's called "responsible parenting."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Probably patented =-P
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
And that changes what? I bet you $1000 the kid knows the freakin' password. (even if he's not supposed to.)
I don't know how their Apple account is setup, but mine emails me receipts of every "purchase" (even for $0.00)
While I agree with you that this was a stupid thing for the parents to do, I think you may want to consider that much of our society is technologically ignorant. My teacher way back in elementary school used to say "you can give a monkey a calculator, but that doesn't mean he can do math." I feel much of our society is that monkey with a calculator, they know what buttons to hit to get what they want, but they do not understand how/why it works and even fewer understand the deeper implications of their actions. This isn't due to a lack of intelligence, but a lack of needing to know and a lack of interest. My guess is the parents don't think of the power of the "toy" they hand off to their kid, because to them it is just a tool of convenience and at that moment the most convenient use is to pacify their kid.