Federal Judge Rules Amazon Must Refund Parents Duped By In-App Purchases (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Gizmodo report: A federal judge has ruled Amazon is liable for billing unwitting parents after their children made unauthorized charges in apps. The court will decide exactly how much money Amazon owes customers in the coming months. The federal judge's decision asserts that Amazon received several complaints from customers about in-app purchases that they were unaware of, mostly incurred by children. The decision points out that Amazon promoted apps as free but failed to inform parents about in-app charges that could be incurred.

Comments

hmmmm

[ganjadude]

maybe dont give your child a tablet with access and a CC linked to it. I mean dont the parents have responsibility for the things they allow their children to do???

Re:hmmmm

[BitZtream]

When you buy an Amazon Fire device it comes linked to your Amazon account unless you specifically tell it not to when buying it by unchecking the tiny checkbox with small print next to it somewhere in the checkout process ... that option ISN'T EVEN AN OPTION ON PRIME NOW PURCHASES. So in all cases, by default, the table comes linked to your CC, and in some cases, you can't even tell it not to be.

I.E. By default, a new Amazon fire tablet ... like ... the kids version for $79 that I bought the other day directly from amazon ... comes already linked to the credit cards on my amazon account and I had to specifically go add an account to the device and restrict it from being able to purchase.

I've purchased the cheapo fire 7" for myself and the kids version for my son so this is from recent direct personal experience that I say this.

Amazon is a shitty company who uses every social engineering trick in the book to rip you off and you let them.

What they've done is as bullshit and they are right to have all of that money torn away from them and should have 3-4x ripped away from them on top as punishment.

Re:hmmmm

[ganjadude]

so you get your kids a tablet that is not your tablet

you dont leave your tablet for the kids to get

no, this is a parenting issue, not an amazon issue

Re:hmmmm

[BitZtream]

Do you have kids, especially any young but mobile kids?

Of course not, he wouldn't have made such retarded statements if he had any experience with either kids or the way amazon does their tablets.

He's just talking out his ass about things he doesn't know anything about.

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless Amazon facilitated the minimization of all payment notice when devices were purchased, and obfuscated both the process of and need for removal of payment information. It is a customer relations failure, and business law is largely developed on that basis. Amazon was greedy and it caught up with them. Now they will give notice in bright red and orange letters rather than in tiny writing resembling the old illegible disclaimers on tv commercials.

Re:hmmmm

[Solandri]

Amazon requires their app be installed on the device and you to be logged in for any apps purchased from their store to run. Or at least they did when I played around with their store a few years ago (back when they were giving away a free app every day). I just created extra Amazon accounts and bought kids apps that way with rebate credit cards (so they couldn't be used to make more charges after the money was gone). But I expect most parents didn't think that through as much as I did.

Normally an app store will add parental controls which allow you to add a password or passcode to confirm purchases. But Amazon's big thing is one-click ordering, and they like to enable it by default. I had to dig through my settings to find where to disable one-click ordering. I want to see a confirmation page, I want to double-check to make sure the correct credit card is being charged, I want to pick and choose the type of shipping especially since they're now giving free digital credits if I don't need a purchase delivered within 2 days. And most importantly, I don't want the kids to be able to buy stuff on my Amazon account by just clicking things when I happen to step away from the computer for a few minutes because the doorbell rang. Even then, their one-click ordering still bites me now and then. I accidentally "bought" an episode of a TV show when my browser froze. Apparently one of my clicks to try to unfreeze it landed on their one-click order button and went through, and apparently the setting to disable one-click ordering for regular Amazon purchases does not apply to digital purchases - there is a separate setting for that. (They refunded it because the entire series was included with my Prime account, so there was no reason for me to buy a single episode. Not sure what would've happened if that wasn't the case, since their policy is no refunds on digital purchases.)

So yeah, I completely blame Amazon for this one. They are way too aggressive with one-click ordering.

Re: hmmmm

[ganjadude]

tablets can be had for 50 bucks these days. one doesnt need to be rich to have a tablet

also if the expense that that much maybe you dont need a tablet either

Re:hmmmm

[known_coward_69]

this is why you set your accounts to ALWAYS ask for a password

Re:hmmmm

[Gnomaana]

Installed AppLock. It took me one reboot and 5 seconds to get around the software completely without entering a single pin.

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

There is something you don't understand. I am a victim of this. I purchased a Kindle Fire kids edition for my 5 year old son. You have to have a parents account on the kindle before you can have a child account on it. To purchase applications at amazon, it won't load from google play store, you have to purchase the app from the parent account. You then give access to the app to the child account. But once you have purchased the app from Amazon, the credit card you used to purchase the app is tied to that application. There is no setting to untie the credit card from the application. So when my 5 year old son sees a screen pop up with a button that says "Purchase the in game upgrade" he automatically clicks on the button. There are no settings to prevent that.

I have had to call Amazon several times and they have refunded my money. But the only way to prevent that from happening is to uninstall the application and to never purchase applications for a child to use. That limits you to only the free apps that can be loaded to the tablet, rendering the Kindle Fire kids edition almost useless.

Nathan

Re:hmmmm

[The MAZZTer]

I think a lot of complaints of this nature tend to boil down to the fact that parents think entering their CC is for a single purchase, but they failed to understand the features relating to autofill for CC numbers and how to control those settings.

In addition people seem to never leverage the ability of devices to have multiple user accounts. You can more easily keep CC numbers associated with the parents' accounts and not the kids, and put restriction on the kids' accounts. Not sure the exact capabilities of different mobile OSs, but I can understand them not implementing too many features like these if nobody is using user accounts... it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Hopefully with the rise of biometrics to log into devices we will see devices automatically managing user accounts for you.

Re:hmmmm

[sjames]

THIS!

It wouldn't be that hard to allow the parents to disallow any credit card charges from the kid's account. It wouldn't be hard to require the parent login to make any charge. The tablet was explicitly marketed as a kid's edition so they couldn't be unaware that children might use it and you can't claim parents were irresponsible by allowing children to use it.

Re: hmmmm

[ganjadude]

thems be the breaks when you got kids though

is it greed by nike that you need to buy new shoes everyfew months/year instead of having a 1 size fits all option?

Re:hmmmm

[internerdj]

To be bitten multiple times is suspicious, but frankly it is also kind of BS that it is opt out for what is marketed to be child's account.

Re:hmmmm

[GrumpySteen]

You're right. It would be easy to do that.

So easy, in fact, that it's already been done.

Amazon even put instructions for disabling in-app purchases on their web site for those users who have never bothered to explore what's in the settings menu on the tablet.

What isn't easy is making people take time to look at a manual before complaining about missing features.

Re:hmmmm

[CCarrot]

Get a credit card for this purpose. Buy all the apps you need, then discontinue the card. Problem solved, no more purchases possible with the invalid card registered to the app.

I never registered a card with my android phone - no personal need for pay-apps. It nags, I press the 'later' button. Works fine, and kids can do no worse than dialling a foreign number. Which they don't know how to do - all they know is the contact list and phone numbers are as obscure as IP addresses . . .

It's called a Visa (or MC) gift card, and it's the only CC I'll use for app stores...

So long as you log in to the credit card provider site and set up a 'mailing address' first so the card passes the automated validity check, it should be fine. I've never had a problem with one of these sites rejecting one yet just because it's a gift card...

Re:hmmmm

[sjames]

Was that there before or after the plaintiffs incurred the unwanted charges?

Re:hmmmm

[parkinglot777]

Here is a rough investigation I did...

First, you need to read the court document from TFA -- https://www.ftc.gov/system/fil... -- and you would find out that the issue occurred in or around 2012.

quotes from the document

Amazon has received many complaints from adults who were surprised to find themselves charged for in-app purchases made by children

In March 2012, Amazon introduced a password prompt feature for in-app charges of $20 or more. (...) This initial step did not include charges below $20 or charges that, in combination, exceeded $20.

In August 2012, the FTC notified Amazon that it was investigating its in-app billing practices. ...

In October 2012, Amazon released software entitled Kindle FreeTime, which allowed parents to control tablet usage by children in a variety of ways. ...

In May 2013, Amazon added a password requirement for all first-time in-app purchases on Kindle Fire tablets. ...

In June 2013, Amazon changed the configuration of the AppStore so that the words “In-App Purchasing” would appear on an app’s description page:

To date, Kindle devices of the “First Generation,” for which software updates are no longer available, enable customers to make in-app purchases of $1 or less without authorization via entry of a password.

That said, when was the link you posted was up for the search? Would any parents need to search BEFORE they give a Kindle to their kids? If they need to, what make them think they need to? Not everyone has the same level of thought to predict what will happen in the future, so they need to find a way to prevent the situation.

Anyway, I checked online with a website which archive a lot of web page. The first date it recorded the page you mentioned is on July 11, 2014 -- http://web.archive.org/web/201... -- which is quite late compared to the time the issue had firstly occurred. See what I am going?

In conclusion, no one should be SJW and said it is every parents' fault. I am sure there are some who are at fault, but I believe majority are suffered because Amazon didn't try to properly solve the issue. Or Amazon was incompetent in solving the issue. Who knows?

Re:hmmmm

[Jason Levine]

Interesting. How did you get around it? In my tests, it ran on device startup so rebooting the device didn't present a vulnerability.

Re:hmmmm

[AthanasiusKircher]

I.E. By default, a new Amazon fire tablet ... like ... the kids version for $79 that I bought the other day directly from amazon ... comes already linked to the credit cards on my amazon account and I had to specifically go add an account to the device and restrict it from being able to purchase.

It gets worse. There are various settings available on different places on devices -- the "1-click ordering" setting, the "do you need a password setting to purchase at all" setting, the "in-apps purchase" setting, etc. All of these seem buried under different menus.

And whenever you buy a new device, they ALWAYS default to ON, even if you've previously disabled them repeatedly. Moreover, you often need to enter your Amazon account password, not a tablet password, just to disable them. (...which is a pain for me, because I use a password manager with a 30-character string of meaningless characters or whatever... and I'm not going to install the password manager client on a Fire tablet I intend for a kid just to edit these settings.) These settings should all be OFF by default.

And heaven help you when you try to leave the Amazon ecosystem (as I did after my first Fire purchase) and want to make use of all the apps you bought at the Amazon appstore on a new non-Amazon Android tablet. Amazon Freetime (which manages kids accounts) doesn't work right on other non-Amazon tablets, but you have to be logged into the Amazon appstore and have some no-password purchasing options enabled by default to make use of many Amazon apps on a non-Amazon Android device. The requirement to be logged in means if you create a "kids account" on your 3rd-party tablet, you won't be able to access the Amazon apps.

Basically, you end up in a situation where you are forced to let your tablet open to kids making some random purchases on 3rd-party tablets, or you give up all the purchased apps you already bought on Amazon's appstore. (There are some 3rd-party apps that try to create kids accounts on Android but generally don't work well with the Amazon app.)

Maybe some of these settings have changed recently, but I know a year or so ago I spent a couple hours trying to find a setting in either my Amazon account or the Amazon appstore app which would allow me to BOTH continue to use a bunch of apps I had purchased AND not allow a small child to make random purchases all the time. I think I finally found something that kind of worked, but it required me to find the setting again and toggle it on and off anytime I wanted to interact with Amazon.

Perhaps there are ways around some of these issues (though at the time I was trying to solve them, there were dozens of complaints on Amazon online help about it).

Regardless -- it's very clear that Amazon has fought again and again to make its tablets, apps, and appstore by default allow people to make accidental purchases. That is a problem. I have no problem with having one-click ordering and no-password purchases and whatever as OPTIONS for people who want them, but they should always be OFF by default.

Re:hmmmm

[Bob_Who]

What isn't easy is making people take time to look at a manual before complaining about missing features.

And Amazon knows this. That's why we have judges.

Social engineering and "gotchas" are a sleazy way to make a profit.

Amazon has lost most of my business because a judge is required to make them stop it.

They don't care if they rip you off, that's what all of the fine print is trying to justify.

I see nothing but good coming from this.

[BarbaraHudson]

I see nothing but good coming from this. Less of a proliferation of games that need you to continuously buy stuff to play. We have laws against advertising to children here, but this is exactly what these apps do.

Impossible to lock down IAP

[wardrich86]

The worst part of the whole thing is that there is no way to lock down IAPs with Amazon. You can restrict purchases from the Amazon app store, but if you have a credit card saved to your account, kids have free reign over IAPs - and some app developers take full advantage of this by tossing catalogues of other apps (which you can purchase) right inside their other apps. My son spent about $10 on some of the shittiest apps I've ever seen because of this. I called Amazon at the time and their solution was simply for me to remove the card from my account.

Re: Impossible to lock down IAP

[peter_gzowski]

The real problem seems to be parental controls are not turned on by default. Turning them on means kids will be required to enter a password for IAP.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201357720

Re:Impossible to lock down IAP

[edtice1559]

They do now. For this reason. Because they lost this case.

Responsibility

[npslider]

I'd say if the kids click on it, and it bills the parents... sounds like the kids just signed up for paper delivery route, lawn mowing, or whatever may instill a little more maturity. Sure the kids may not have known better, but what better way to teach a useful life lesson, not a punishment, just a way to learn how the real world works.

Do their models account for accidental purchases?

[swb]

I wonder if their revenue models account for accidental purchases? Purchases that get made unintentionally because their system is deliberately designed to generate purchases extremely easily, even if the account holder wouldn't otherwise make them in a considered way.

It's hard not to think that both one-click and in-app purchases, especially for games oriented at children, are intentionally designed to generate revenue from purchases that the account holder would not make if they had more consideration.

I guess maybe 10% of it might be useful convenience, but the rest, especially in-app just seems to be opaque about real costs.

I wish I could take a job for $5 an hour and then show up and offer "in-employment upgrades" where I would charge other, unknown-until-purchased fees for doing actual tasks.

"Oh, you want me to show up at 8:30? I offer an AM arrival 5-day pack for $399 per week, otherwise it's $99 per day. And I offer a Stay until 5 PM 5-day pack for the same prices for the AM pack. You can buy the Combo All Day pack for $789 per week. I also offer this in annual subscriptions, $40,000 per year. Buy for five years and it's $195,000."

Re:Two core items (and a their sub-item)

[dgatwood]

1) Amazon took a gamble. They knew what they were doing and they were counting on winning the court case to keep the $$$, then appearing to capitulate to end users and locking it down a bit more (to appear to be "listening" to their customers). Amazon did this by design. They were jerks, but it's the way businesses work. Get the money if you can, then fight giving it back. They counted on customers just paying it to be done with it (and they are not the only ones that have done this).

It certainly seems to be the way that Amazon works. I repeatedly got bitten by the instant purchase option for Amazon Instant Video, which allowed me to accidentally purchase things that were free on Prime streaming. I complained about it, and they refunded it, but the fact that none of their means of disabling those purchases actually solves the problem (and the fact that many were explicitly overridden for Instant Video) told me that they wanted people to accidentally make purchases and have to complain if they wanted a refund, under the assumption that most people wouldn't bother to complain for a couple of bucks.

I eventually gave up and wrote some custom CSS to remove the buy buttons.