How My Kid Racked Up $100 of In App Purchases Without Me Knowing

How to make sure your kids don't rack up charges for in app purchases.

What's going on? I'm rich DeMuro.

This is rich on Tech. It is story time, and it involves me and my son. Long story short, my six year old racked up nearly one hundred dollars in charges on his iPad for in app purchases. So let me explain what went wrong and how you can avoid the same fate.

So the story starts with Super Mario Run. You know that game. It's really fun. It's from Nintendo.

My son wanted to play it, so I downloaded it to his iPad.

Now, to do this, I have.

To unlock all the restrictions that I have placed on his device. To do this, I have to go under Settings General, then Restrictions, type in my passcode, and I have most things disabled at all times, including the iTunes Store, installing apps, deleting apps, and in app purchases.

So whenever I want to install.

A new app or update the apps on his device, I have to go in here and disable the restrictions by using a special passcode. Then, once you're finished installing an app or downloading for purchasing.

An app, you have to go back in and re enable them.

Well, apparently, after downloading Super Mario Run, I forgot to re enable the restrictions.

But that's not all I forgot to do. But there was.

Another clue when my son wanted to unlock the entire game, which by the way, costs ten dollars.

It's a lot for an in app purchase, but I was willing to do it, but I thought it was odd that.

All I needed was his fingerprint to complete the transaction.

Fast forward two days go by.

I come home the other day and my wife says, hey, you might want to take a look at Parker's iPad because he was going on what she described as a buying spree. And I thought, in my head, well, that's not really possible. He can't do that. I had a feeling maybe I forgot to re enable the restrictions, so that's what she was talking about. But certainly if he was actually making any purchases, I'd have to approve them first.

Well, nope, not the case. I looked in his email and I found.

Three charges, three real charges seventy nine to ninety nine for an in app purchase of gems in a racing game he likes. Then two more charges of seven to ninety nine each for more gems, for a total of ninety five ninety seven.

Of course, what I do.

I called up Apple immediately and I got a friendly woman named Melissa on the phone, and I explained to her what had happened.

Now.

Eventually Apple gave me the credit, and getting in touch with them was very easy. We even got disconnected and she called me back. And I really liked how they verify your account. You actually log into your account on your desktop and you look in this tiny corner for a four digit code.

You tell that code to Apple, and that's how they verify you.

I thought that was pretty smart. So I explained the issue to Melissa, which I assumed she had heard a thousand times that day so far, and she explained what happened to me. She said, there was one setting turned off on my son's account, and that's called ask to Buy.

Now.

I'm not sure how that happened, because I'm aware of this setting and it's enabled for my other son's account, and I don't know how.

It got turned off.

But basically, they're supposed to send you a text when your kid wants to purchase something, and when you see that text or that notification.

Right on your phone.

You can approve or deny the purchase. Now you can find this under setting. You tap your name at the top, or says I Cloud, then family Sharing, Then you tap the name of your kid and make sure that ask to buy is turned on.

In my case, it was turned off.

That's how he was able to purchase the item without my approval. Now that feature is turned back on. So again two things here. The restrictions were off and the ask to buy was off, So two failures.

That's how he was able to purchase.

Now, Melissa refunded me the in app purchases. I asked her if this happened often. I was guessing she deals with it all day long. She said, yes, she has an eleven year old.

This is kind of a known thing.

But I assume she's not really allowed to elaborate because I don't think Apple would like that.

But crisis averted.

I'm not mad at my kid, but I do think it's interesting how fast something like this can happen, even when you think you're being pretty diligent with your restriction settings. One thing I do think that Apple can improve is that when a kid makes a purchase on a family account. I think that the family organizer she get a copy of the receipt.

No matter what I mean. My kid is six listed as six in there. I'm the family organizer.

I think it's only logical that I would get an email when he makes a purchase. That way, myself and all parents are alerted instantly, and they can take action sooner than later. Lesson learned. But the story still gives me a laugh. But that's only because it was all worked out in the end. My kid asked if I was mad at him.

I said no.

I actually thought it was pretty brilliant of him to go on this instant buying spree, because you know, he's tapped those buttons so many times before and they didn't do anything, and now once they did something, he probably found that pretty interesting. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. If you like the Rich on Tech podcast,

I'll talk to you real soon.