Apple sued by parents over accidental in-app purchases made by their children

I’m not sure about you guys, but there are times when I would rather pay full price for an app and leave it at that, as opposed to a freemium app whereby additional content of the game will have to be unlocked through in-app purchases. While the freemium model is a pretty good one as far as developers are concerned, parents don’t seem too thrilled by it and have since taken Apple to court over it. 

Their reason? It would seem that a group of parents have had unnecessary fees being charged to their iTunes account by their children who may or may not have been aware of the charges incurred while going on a spending spree with the in-app purchase system. While Apple has argued that there are procedures to prevent accidental purchases such as passwords and the ability to disable in-app purchases, these features were apparently not implemented prior to the lawsuit which is why US District Judge, Edward Davila, has ruled that the case holds some merit and that the group of parents may continue with the legal process.

“Accidental” in-app purchases are not new, in fact in one example, a mother in the UK was faced with a bill shock when it was discovered that her 10-year old daughter managed to rack up £1,500 in in-app purchases.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple
Tags: itunes app store, Legal