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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!
They require a credit card to install free apps. What gets me is they required password for doing anything on the app store even free apps, but no password to buy thousands in upgrades. It's a deliberate scam, or incredible incompetence. I succpect the latter.
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.
The elephant in the room is that we, as a society, are allowing these games to exist at all. Yes they are entertainment products but they should have limits on their abusive nature. I mean if you can fleece someone for $500 on a game that no one would pay $60 for - good for you you've scammed someone but $5000+ is criminal (or rather should be).
This is a dark pattern which is a user interface designed to trick people into doing things.
I'm surprised how many Slashdotters have replied "he ought to keep closer control of what his kid is doing" and "Apple isn't at fault, they just created the system". Apple is responsible for the user interface and just because the user "could have navigated the user interface" and not had his kid buy the in-app purchases doesn't mean that Apple isn't responsible. "You could have figured out the bad user interface" is never an excuse, especially when the bad user interface is on purpose.
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.
I totally agree. Would you give your kid your credit card, pat him on the head and then send him to the arcade? That's what this clueless putz did.
I used to administer a billing system for mobile phones back from the late 1990s into the early 2000s and even back then we used to get calls from irate parents with this exact problem. Back then it was mostly kids and teenagers racking up $1000 plus bills with SMS lottery games and occasionally even back then through excessive internet use while on vacation etc... Dealing with some of the complaints we got thought me three things. Firstly, you would be amazed at the size of the bills kids and can rack up on mobile devices if you put them on a subscription based service (I remember one in the region of $11000). We solved this problem by programming the billing system to cap spending at a low default value forcing people to turn up and explicitly have the spending roof lifted. Secondly, having seen a hard nosed manager insist on payment I can tell you that you are better off waiving these bills or refunding because the parent's second call is always going to be the local tabloid or TV station. For some reason some hard nosed managers seem to have to learn that lesson the hard way. Thirdly, nothing teaches a child or teenager fiscal responsibility quicker than giving them a budget and letting them figure out for them selves that they can't have everything and must prioritise and if they want more money they'll have to get a job mowing lawns or down at the supermarket stuffing plastic bags and collecting shopping carts. So in light of my experience I would suggest:
a) Never give my kid your own personal iPad/Android Tablet.
b) Buy a used iPad/Android Tablet for the kid to use they are not *THAT* expensive.
c) Give the kid an allowance and make him/her buy gift cards to finance their gaming and give him/her a prepaid subscription they have to fill from their allowance for their internet and telephone needs.
We don't just "allow" them, as a society, we demand them.
We're a society that happily spends $8 on a latte we drink in under a minute but refuses to pay $1 for a game we'd spend hours on.
We're a society that balks at paying a monthly subscription fee to pay for game servers, yet will happily spend far more money on fake items. Think of how many times you've heard of a game "going free to play" and had their profits skyrocket because of it?
The elephant in the room is that, yes, Apple does absolutely think it's possible some guy will randomly spend $6000 on virtual dinosaurs. It happens all the time. And we, as a society, are quite willing to make that possible solely so we don't have to spend our latte-money on a game we'd spend far more time with. We demanded free to play games, and we got them.
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.
As a firearms owner and carrier (30+ years of EDC) I would never, ever want a fingerprint reader or interlock on any of my firearms. When I pull the trigger, I want it to go bang, period.
Going a bit off topic, but if your gun was instead in the hands of your son or daughter pointing it at themselves or others I bet you'd like it to not go bang. Gun suicide and misuse using family owned guns is a much bigger problem than self defense unless you live in an unusually dangerous neighborhood, and before you say they can commit suicide another way studies in the UK after it switched from poisonous coal gas to safe natural gas shows the overall suicide rate falls if you take away an easy suicide method (no more "sticking your head in the oven")
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.