This past weekend, my young granddaughter was over at our house and asked me if she could use my iPad to play an app. Of course she could, I told her. A cute and free app? Why not? Hey, they take just minutes to download, they’re entertaining and even educational in some cases, and they can also be a way that Grampa can connect a bit with a little bright-eyed angel.
And so she played, making dozens of in-app decisions. So what colored dress should Tinkerbell wear to her fairy friend’s party? How many red apples is that smiling horse about to gobble? It didn’t matter what choices she made: The icing on top of those tasty app cupcakes is that those colorful little bits of fun are free. Well, sometimes.
The truth is they’re pretty much all simply advertisements for the in-app-purchased real game—the full experience that kids will really want to play. Sure, you can just settle for the play of the freebie. But what young app player doesn’t long for those extra puzzles, the leveled-up outfits, the sparkling accessories that you can only get through cold, hard cash?
Thank goodness children can’t rack up in-app purchases on their own, right?
Tell that to the Kitchens.
A British couple, Greg and Sharon Kitchen, downloaded a free app for their 5-year-old son, Danny, and walked away—allowing the lad to dabble with that little touchscreen to his little heart’s content. What they didn’t realize was that there were add-ons and extra weapons that could be picked up with a click in the game. Click-click-click. And when the credit card bill showed up at the end of the month, the equivalent of $2,500 in app extras were part of the charge. Yeah, that’s not 25 dollars, that’s more than $2K. And it’s a legitimate charge.
It’s not an isolated case. For a time, many parents were plagued by iTunes’ 15-minute loophole. Sure, iTunes and other app warehouses have restrictions and password requirements that help curb children making dozens of in-app purchases willy-nilly. But for convenience sake, iTunes allowed anyone entering their password to make a new in-app purchase for the next 15 minutes without entering the password again.
Apple received so much flak about the issue that they changed things up. So now, after a purchase is made, you can continue to make other purchases from the App Store without entering your password—but try to make an in-app purchase, and you’ll be prompted to enter your password again.
Of course, that didn’t stop little Danny Kitchen. He knew his dad’s password, you see. That’s the way those little 5-year-olds are. They’re sneaky, conniving little creatures, slipping in and out of the shadows with iPads clutched in their grimy little mitts. They see everything. And they’re a big reason why Juniper Research projects that in-app purchases will amount to somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.6 billion over the next four years.
With that in mind I’ve set up new house rules when my granddaughter visits. iPad supervision is a must, of course … and the security cameras I installed are on at all times!
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