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Amazon Will Refund Millions of Unauthorized In-App Purchases Made By Kids (techcrunch.com)
Amazon will refund millions of dollars worth of unauthorized in-app purchased made by kids, having dropped its appeal of last year's ruling by a federal judge who sided with the Federal Trade Commission in the agency's lawsuit against Amazon. "The FTC's original complaint said that Amazon should be liable for millions of dollars it charged customers, because of the way its Appstore software was designed -- that is, it allowed kids to spend unlimited amounts of money in games and other apps without requiring parental consent," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The issue had to do with the way the Amazon Appstore's in-app purchasing system worked. The Amazon Appstore is the store that comes preloaded on Amazon mobile devices, like Kindle Fire tablets, for example, though there is a way to load it onto other Android devices, too. In Amazon's Appstore, which launched back in 2011, the company didn't originally require passwords on in-app purchases. This allowed kids to buy coins and other items to their hearts' content. One particularly awful example involved a game called "Ice Age Village" that offered an in-app purchase of $99.99. Amazon introduced password-protected in-app purchases in March 2012, but then only on those where the purchase exceeded $20. In early 2013, it updated the system again to require passwords, but also allowed a 15-minute window afterwards where no password was required. The FTC said Amazon didn't obtain "informed consent" until July 2014. To make matters worse, parents complaining weren't told how to get a refund and Amazon had even suggested at times that refunds weren't possible, the FTC's complaint had said. More than $70 million in in-app charges made between November 2011 and May 2016 may be eligible for refunds, the FTC notes. It's not likely that all affected customers will take the time to make their requests, however.
Hi, I gave my child my credit card info and was surprised when they bought stuff online. I shouldn't be responsible!
Not what happened. What actually occurred here: back in the days a few years back before a lot of parents were experienced with tablets and even knew what an "in-app purchase" was, Amazon shipped out tablets and linked them to Amazon user accounts (which had credit card info attached).
Parents who had never made an in-app purchase and this couldn't even foresee the need to avoid them or warn kids against them suddenly found themselves with $300 bills for virtual "smurfberries" or whatever due to the unknowing actions of a 4-year-old playing a game that was advertised as FREE on Amazon's appstore.
In other words, this was a toy unlike any other parents had encountered, which would suddenly start charging parents more money without asking them. And, as noted in the summary, even after Amazon became aware of the problem, it didn't offer a setting to turn those purchases off for years... So even if a parent had the good sense to password protect app purchases themselves, the kids could still go make IN-app purchases with no notice.
That's pretty much the definition of non transparency in user settings, where the default should ALWAYS be "don't charge me money unless I confirm, and at least give me an option that requires me to confirm and authenticate EVERY time if I want."