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!
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
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.
.
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.
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.
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
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.
The real WTF is that you can possibly run up a bill that large in just 6 days with a free to pay game.
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.
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).
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."
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/