Apple’s agreement to settle a class-action suit regarding in-app purchases and kids will bring a sigh of relief to many parents.
As the parent of two kids (one of whom is six and fully capable of wreaking digital havoc; the two-year-old is still fairly harmless), I can sympathize with the plaintiffs: Their argument was that certain kid-friendly apps had in-app purchases available that they didn’t know about. Nobody thought twice about letting little Timmy play with Funwords Deluxe (an app I just made up, but you know what I mean), but little did they know that after they downloaded it for $1.99 and left him alone with it, it had options within the game to open new levels for 99 cents a pop. Just click here and your payment will be automatically sent to the credit card on file with iTunes! So easy!
And so Apple (AAPL) will refund money to those families whose finances were rattled by excessive in-app purchasing. Kind of reminds me of when kids would call 1-900 numbers and rack up exorbitant charges on the family phone bill because of all the “entertainment services” they were calling.
Or so I’ve been told.
All that being said, there’s something any parent can do to avoid meeting this fate. If you have a iPhone or iPad, go into Settings, then go into General, then go into Restrictions. Enable restrictions (you’ll have to create a PIN so Timmy can’t undo your handiwork) and then turn off In-App Purchases under the Allowed Content heading. You can also adjust other parameters, like whether your kids can have access to iTunes, the camera, or the Safari web browser.
Then you can let Timmy tap away to his heart’s content, relaxed in the knowledge that your wallet is not one of the levels he can unlock.
