It used to be back in the day we would hear many horror stories where parents would receive credit card bills that would be insanely high, no thanks to their children making in-app purchases without any regard to the cost, mostly because these kids assumed that these in-app purchases were free, or that they did not cost real-life money.That being said it seems that despite the measures that companies like Apple and Google have put into place, we are now learning of a new story in which a 7-year old managed to rack up $5,900 in in-app purchases while playing Jurassic World on his father’s iPad. According to Mohamed Shugaa, it seems that he did not know his son knew the passcode to his iPad, and his Apple ID password, both of which allowed his son to bypass the security measures Apple put in place.
According to Shugaa, he thinks that there needs to be even better security measures put in place to prevent such things from happening in the future. He claims, “I was so mad. I’m 32 years old, why would Apple think I would be spending thousands of pounds on buying dinosaurs and upgrading a game? 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?”
To date, Apple and Google have made it clearer which apps will contain in-app purchases. On Apple’s part, they have also included options where passwords are required for every purchase, versus the older system where there was a brief time window after making an initial purchase that a password was not needed. However, this story has a happy ending because Apple decided to refund Shugaa in full after hearing his story.