Doctor ignores default iOS parental controls, child racks up $1,800 in in-app purchases
A doctor in North Wales claims he had to sell his family car in order to pay for the in-app purchases his seven-year-old son had racked up during one hour on an iPhone game.
Consultant endocrinologist Muhammad Mutaza and son. Neither knew about iOS parental controls
Consultant endocrinologist Muhammad Mutaza from Colwyn Bay in North Wales, says that Apple "tricked" his child by not preventing in-app purchases. His son, 11, played the free version of "Dragons: Rise of Berk" for an hour, and made around 30 in-app purchases.
Mutaza got 29 email receipts before noticing any of them, and by then his total App Store bill was GBP 1,289.70 ($1,792).
"Initially, my thought was that I'd been scammed," he told the UK's Daily Mail newspaper. "I never thought it would be possible to spend that much money on a kids' game."
"It's not even limited to one click a day, you could click 'purchase' 10,000 times and spend a million pounds on it in half an hour," he continued.
Mutaza complained to Apple, saying that his son had been "pressured" into making the purchases. Apple refunded him GBP 207 ($290) -- and now Mutaza says that he is now considering legal action.
"I've been an Apple customer since 2005," he told the Daily Mail, "[and] I just said to the customer services man on the phone, 'well done, you've ripped me off, congratulations, you have succeeded in ripping my child off, you've tricked him."
Mutaza says he then told Apple that he will not be "spending another penny on you ever again."
Apple's parental control features are turned on by default for children the age of Mutaza's son. While Mutaza says that his son must have memorized his password, account password security is the responsibility of the device or account owner.
When queried by the publication about the incident, Apple also pointed out that beyond password security, "Ask to Buy" is only one of a number of parental control features that are designed to prevent this situation.
Separately, Ask to Buy and such protections are among the issues Apple has used to defend its App Store curation. Its recent privacy publication says that without such control over the App Store, it would be much more difficult for parents to avoid their children running up such bills.
Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast -- and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.
Consultant endocrinologist Muhammad Mutaza and son. Neither knew about iOS parental controls
Consultant endocrinologist Muhammad Mutaza from Colwyn Bay in North Wales, says that Apple "tricked" his child by not preventing in-app purchases. His son, 11, played the free version of "Dragons: Rise of Berk" for an hour, and made around 30 in-app purchases.
Mutaza got 29 email receipts before noticing any of them, and by then his total App Store bill was GBP 1,289.70 ($1,792).
"Initially, my thought was that I'd been scammed," he told the UK's Daily Mail newspaper. "I never thought it would be possible to spend that much money on a kids' game."
"It's not even limited to one click a day, you could click 'purchase' 10,000 times and spend a million pounds on it in half an hour," he continued.
Mutaza complained to Apple, saying that his son had been "pressured" into making the purchases. Apple refunded him GBP 207 ($290) -- and now Mutaza says that he is now considering legal action.
"I've been an Apple customer since 2005," he told the Daily Mail, "[and] I just said to the customer services man on the phone, 'well done, you've ripped me off, congratulations, you have succeeded in ripping my child off, you've tricked him."
Mutaza says he then told Apple that he will not be "spending another penny on you ever again."
Apple's parental control features are turned on by default for children the age of Mutaza's son. While Mutaza says that his son must have memorized his password, account password security is the responsibility of the device or account owner.
When queried by the publication about the incident, Apple also pointed out that beyond password security, "Ask to Buy" is only one of a number of parental control features that are designed to prevent this situation.
Separately, Ask to Buy and such protections are among the issues Apple has used to defend its App Store curation. Its recent privacy publication says that without such control over the App Store, it would be much more difficult for parents to avoid their children running up such bills.
Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast -- and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.
Comments
I have one freemium game I play fairly regularly - I've accumulated quite a bit of in game currency just by "getting good" - I haven't paid them a penny. I just did the math. over $2000 if I had paid for it? How can I turn that in?!
Note: Many years ago there were definitely issues with the system of which Apple was clearly culpable, but they resolved that lack of protections long ago.
* I think he probably had an extra car that he wasn't really using and decided to sell around the time of his own egregious oversight more so than he didn't have the funds to cover the cost, but either way it's not a good look for him.
And just maybe that child needs to medicated.
I think he is a bad parent and doctor.
The wife plays the game, too, and she lets the nieces and nephews use her iPhone when they're in town so the first thing I did was disable in-app purchases, switch the complex passcode for the device to a basic PIN for their use, and then logoff of Media & Purchases so they can't even circumvent by re-enabling the in-app purchases in Screen Time, since it and Settings still can't be password protected, which is the only issue I have with Apple.
Now I just have her bring an old iPad which they can use that doesn't have anything logged in and one of us can manually install a game if they want it, but also leave in-app purchased disabled—for all devices—since it's not something that ever really gets used in my house and only takes a few clicks if I ever do need to enable it.
I understand that my efforts are probably more intense than others, but even the minimum level of proactive measures this will never happen.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304#prevent-purchases
PS: Another solution is subscribing to Apple Arcade which are all ad-free.
You can password protect Screen Time, even with a different password than the unlock one. That's how I have our devices setup.
(edited for incorrect spelling)
It is really easy to prevent something like this from happening.
If you can pass medical school and Endo boards you can figure out how to limit purchases by your kid. Beyond that, you would give a kid a limited account if you were willing to let them buy stuff without parental controls.
But otherwise he isn’t accepting any responsibility for something that is at least partly, if not majorly his and his sons fault. Not a whole lot of sympathy.