“Apple Inc., Google Inc. and other companies that make and sell mobile applications will be told by European Union regulators to curb purchases by children, the EU said today,” Aoife White and Stephanie Bodoni report for Bloomberg.
“The European Commission and consumer-protection authorities will meet with app makers and marketers to discuss default settings that may lead to consumers racking up purchases without giving their explicit consent,” White and Bodoni report. “Games that encourage children to buy items or that are misleadingly advertised as free will also be on the agenda, the EU said in an e-mailed statement.”
White and Bodoni report, “Apple will refund at least $32.5 million to consumers to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission complaint that it billed for app purchases made by children without parental consent, according to a settlement agreed last month.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: And now for the rest of the story:
It doesn’t feel right for the FTC to sue over a case that had already been settled. To us, it smacked of double jeopardy. ‘However, the consent decree the FTC proposed does not require us to do anything we weren’t already going to do, so we decided to accept it rather than take on a long and distracting legal fight. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, January 15, 2014
Related articles:
Apple to refund at least $32.5 million to settle FTC complaint it charged for kids’ In-App Purchases without parental consent – January 16, 2014
Apple’s Cook settles with FTC over kids’ In-App Purchases rather than endure legal fight – January 15, 2014
Apple refunds 8-year-old girl’s $6,000 bill for in-app purchases – July 21, 2013
Apple notifies parents of In-App Purchase settlement details – June 24, 2013
In-App Purchasing lawsuit against Apple allowed to proceed – April 21, 2012
Parents sue Apple over in-app charges – April 16, 2012
Lack of parental controls on Amazon’s tiny screen Kindle Fire lets kids charge up a storm – December 12, 2011
Freemium and Apple’s App Store: The in-app purchasing model really works – October 14, 2011
That’s what happens when you let your kid play with your iDevice. Make them get their own 🙂
What kind of idiot parent lets their kids loose on an iOS device that’s got a direct feed from their bank account? Is it the same kind of cretin that enables no-passwod purchase?
How about restricting your kids to just using Apple iTunes/iApps cards? That way, when they come whining that ‘there aint no credit left,’ you can have the satisfaction of saying, ‘If you aint got, you cant spend it.”