Apple Agrees to FTC Terms Over In-App Purchases With $32 Million Settlement

[Renzatic]

Hey, how about getting rid of all of the luxury brands at all, e.g. Giorgio Armani, Swarovski, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, etc.

Come on, there are people don't give a blink about spending hundreds or even thousands, but at the same time can be easily irritated by the slightest hassle. There are also people don't mind at all walking dozens of miles just to save several dollars.

False equivalency, dude guy. They don't exactly market those brands for kids, and don't make it so you can buy more of their expensive goods by clicking a couple of buttons without any prompts from your credit card beforehand.

 

[tongxinshe]

As for the whole parental question, my son succeeded in using an IAP in a game on my iPad. I was right there. He found a game that he wanted, so I downloaded it. We launched it, and there was something that he wanted (it was the option to fly a particular plane), so he clicked on it, a little dialog popped up, and he touched the OK button, all in a moment when I was answering a question my wife had asked me. BAM! A $10 purchase. Wrote to Apple and they refunded the purchase, but it drove home how quick and easy it was for my son, who occasionally plays on my iPad or my wife's iPad, to make a purchase if we've recently had a reason to enter the password.

There are always moments that you need to take a break. The way to make it is to train your kids into a well-behaved one before he reaches a trouble-making age.
"Need to spend $10? Um, I need to get clear approval from my parents first, otherwise I will be punished."
"Um, this is an unusual thing, I better get a better understanding before taking a bold move, otherwise I or my family might get hurt."

 

[samcraig]

There are always moments that you need to take a break. The way to make it is to train your kids into a well-behaved one before he reaches a trouble-making age.
"Need to spend $10? Um, I need to get clear approval from my parents first, otherwise I will be punished."
"Um, this is an unusual thing, I better get a better understanding before taking a bold move, otherwise I or my family might get hurt."

Again with the trouble-making.

That's quite a bold statement and over-generalization.

 

[Renzatic]

Again with the trouble-making.

That's quite a bold statement and over-generalization.

In a world of perfect children and psychic parents, he's actually spot on.

 

[samcraig]

Because if you do a good enough job, YOUR KIDS WILL LITERALLY BEHAVE 100% OF THE TIME! IT'S SCIENTIFIC FACT, YO!

Of course putting in bold, caps and raising the font size always makes the opinion more valid too. And scientific!

 

[gnasher729]

Umm, what improvements and additional steps were implemented? AFAIK the 15-minute thing still exists and is ON by default (yes there is a setting for this that was added to iOS at one point, but the default is still WRONG) ....

The default is perfect for me. Many people have no children, many people have separate accounts for their children, and many people have children who are not morons.

 

[ericinboston]

My bad.

Bold, and particularly the underlined.

1)I was saying "likely"...I don't work for Apple or the government to give a 100% certain answer.
2)The government doesn't sue you unless you break (or alleged to break) a law.
3)90%+ of the time when a company settles out of court, there is guilt, yet the settlement wipes away the guilt. Apple and the government knew that if they went to court, both parties would be spending time and money to get through the lawsuit. Now, Apple knew how much $$/fines they would be paying if they lost the suit...and obviously it was substantially more than $32mill otherwise Apple would have fought it. But Apple didn't fight...they worked with the government to come up with a fine/settlement that was high enough to avoid the aggravation of going to court. If Apple knew that it had a good chance of winning the suit, Apple would have fought. Period.


The open-hearted love letter that Tim wrote, in my eyes, is BS...he knew the email would be on the internet within minutes of hitting SEND so he wrote it this way so the sheeple can say "awwwww. whatta nice guy. he took one for the team"

 

[Renzatic]

Of course putting in bold, caps and raising the font size always makes the opinion more valid too. And scientific!

Good point. For the sake of scientific correctitude, I went back and edited my post.

----------

...and many people have children who are not morons.

I hate to tell you this, Gnasher, but all kids below the age of 12 have dumb moments regularly.

 

[ChrisCW11]

Just do it Apple

I bet if Apple supported multiple users on iPhone/iPad and have a "child" mode which explicitly locked out in-app purchases, they would have won both suits.

I think it is valid for Apple to be sued for this for every update of iOS and iDevice release that do not offer multiple user modes. If there is any possibility for a child to make an in-app purchase without their parent's consent this is still a valid lawsuit. Again and again and again.

This is one feature that Apple has to smarten the ****** up about. The average family is not going to buy 4 separate iPad's, especially to buy a $800 device and hand it to some petulant 3 year old, regardless of how much Apple wants this to happen. Offering support for multiple users is the only sane and logical step forward for iOS and Apple is being proud, naive and obtuse by not offering this feature.

 

[tongxinshe]

Do you have kids?

I started using punishment and rewards when they were just 1, and increased their sense of responsibility little by little. I never worry about them making troubles to me now. They have learnt to "think again" since they were 6. I plan to encourage them to have more sense of "take more risks for chances of bigger rewards" after they enter the college.

 

[samcraig]

I hate to tell you this, Gnasher, but all kids below the age of 12 have dumb moments regularly.

As do most above the age of 12.

I start to punish my kids when they are just 1 year old, and increase their sense of responsibility little by little, so I never worry about them making troubles for me now. They have learnt to "think again" since they were 6.

You should write a parenting book. Clearly you have all the answers on how to raise perfect children.

 

[globalist]

The default is not intended for ill-behaviral kids, since they are definitely not the majority of the customers. If you know your kid is not a well-behaved one, you should know to turn on parents guide before giving the device to him/her. My kids only do things after they learnt from trustable sources that those are safe things to do.

It's the parents job to train the kids well before they reach the trouble-making age!

Sure, let's blame the "ill-behaviral" kids, lol. And if your well-groomed cat or your college-educated wife accidentally click the Purchase button, you're gonnna suck it up too and chalk the accident to what, exactly?

 

[Renzatic]

I start to punish my kids when they are just 1 year old, and increase their sense of responsibility little by little, so I never worry about them making troubles for me now. They have learnt to "think again" since they were 6.

For your sake, let's hope they don't go through a rebellious stage.

My parents grounded me all the time, even more than occasionally spanked me when I did something wrong. I got the speeches, the morality lessons, the objective examples, the think aheads. The whole nine yards.

...didn't exactly stop me from accidentally burning down a barn when I was 10, though.

 

[marclondon]

To put it another way, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

And Apple agrees with this, although it would be much better if they threw these freemium crooks off the app store - having them on there tarnishes Apple's reputation.

In my case I made one slip - despite being paranoid about letting the kids anywhere near a credit card, I first bought them a couple of games for their iPad (they are twin boys) for about £2 each on their birthday. I've done this before but this time I forgot to take the card details off - and in three days they'd run up £997.60 in in-app purchases on what are just low grade kids games (yes, that's nearly a thousand pounds, not dollars).

I must say Apple were great - I logged a complaint and three minutes later someone from Chicago called me and after talking to their supervisor, refunded the whole lot.

But not so great in letting these freemium merchants run riot - there will always be lapses in even the most careful Internet savvy user (which I was…).

 

[IJ Reilly]

It is if you are trying to abuse your market power and with the intent of hurting your competitors...in Australia anyway. It's called Predatory Pricing.

http://www.accc.gov.au/business/anti-competitive-behaviour/predatory-pricing

Under those conditions (which have to be proven), it is also illegal under U.S. antitrust law. The point being, it is not inherently illegal. This distinction seems to escape a lot of people.

 

[gnasher729]

If you set up a purchase password in Android's Play Store, I think it is asked for every time.

iOS allowed any number of purchases for 15 minutes after you had entered your password to install the app.

So what was happening, was that the parents would think they were doing the right thing by needing a password to install an app. Then they would hand the iPad over, thinking everything was safe.

They had no idea that no password was necessary for purchases for another quarter hour. In that time, a child (or for that matter, your best college buddy) could easily purchase hundreds of dollars of imaginary coins, fish, clowns or whatever.

(Never mind the fact that there should be a law against $100 in-app purchases in games targeted at young children in the first place.)

I would think that the person clicking the "Buy" button is entering a contract. And in most countries, any contract that someone underage enters is voidable, and can be voided at any time by the person, or by their legal guardians, which requires a full refund.

 

[macs4nw]

Good idea, but I could hear it now, "Why do I have to put in a second password or code to do in app purchases? I already put in my password once. What a pain!".

Apple can't possibly win…..

Another simple solution would be to add a second password for IAP. So it doesn't matter if they already are signed in - IAP would require a 2nd password or pin code.

That's a good suggestion, alternatively, this is where Touch Id could really shine once implemented on more iDevices.

 

[tongxinshe]

1)Apple HAS NOT PAID the parents yet...Tim's letter states "In all, we received 37,000 claims and we will be reimbursing each one as promised. " Mind you that these mailings/alerts to parents went out LAST YEAR...probably not 12/31/2013 but I bet much earlier....so why has Apple not paid yet? Hmmmmm.

2)Even if the 37,000 people were due back $10 each, that would only be $370,000...much, much smaller than Apple's settlement of 100x that amount!


It's no wonder Apple got sued...Apple took their sweet *** time paying back the parents and likely the payments would have been so insignificant to Apple ($370k) that Apple wouldn't have learned its lesson.

There's a reason why Apple "settled" for $32million folks...and that letter does not describe the real reason....which is likely that Apple violated a bunch of laws, were going to easily be found guilty, and hence be penalized boatloads of fines worth far more than $32mill and obviously far more than $370k.

I'm not saying Apple is evil but it should be fined/penalized like ANY OTHER company in the USA that breaks the law. Period. Maybe if Apple had electronically refunded people within 72 hours (rather than months/years), the government would not have pursued the lawsuit.

No wonder the whole country is full of the sense of irresponsibility and always try to put blames onto others!

 

[gnasher729]

Tell that to Lego (etc etc) who sells many $100+ toys targeted at young children.

If a kid could enter a store, take a $100 Lego toy and walk away, and the money was taken automatically out of the parents' bank account, that would be different.

 

[tongxinshe]

Nice job being a stereotypical condescending european.

Also, I feel this is a completely legitimate case, and Apple is guilty of enabling this. Many popular Free-to-play games such as Clash of Clans or Candy Crush Saga are 100% intentionally designed to manipulate human addictive personalities. I used to work in that industry and was encouraged to design these elements myself (we used terms such as "infinite money sink" when looking for ways where your money would provide only temporary goods).

It's disgusting, one of the worst things to happen in the games industry, and I hope all game development studios involved in that industry go under or exit that market.

Then, please first shut down Las Vegas, shut down BigLotto, etc.

 

[hayesk]

For me it was simple. Do not link a card to your ID. If I want to purchase something from iTunes or the App Store, then I purchase gift cards in the closest amount I require to make that purchase. Then there is no chance of funds being spent without my knowledge.

That sounds much harder than just enabling the parental controls on your iOS device. That's what I did.

However, there were phone numbers with the same area code as our area and our own phone number that were still technically "long distance" according to the phone company.

Of course. Where did anyone claim that everything in an area code is a local call? Area codes can span multiple states and provinces.

 

[samcraig]

No wonder the whole country is full of the sense of irresponsibility and always try to put blames onto others!

Then, please first shut down Las Vegas, shut down BigLotto, etc.

Straw men and hyperbole.

Great combo!

 

[tongxinshe]

Who is saying that?

I've maintained for the last year or so when this came to light that Apple's "default" setting is mostly to blame.

So Apple isn't the new baby sitter - but they should definitely be liable much like the parents you're pointing a finger at.

Unlike you, there are many people who use smart phones who don't know every setting or where to find them. That doesn't make them stupid. It makes them ignorant. And that's not ignorant in the derogatory way.

Just like you didn't know that it may invoke a $6/minute charge when your kids make an international phone call?

 

[Renzatic]

No wonder the whole country is full of the sense of irresponsibility and always try to put blames onto others!

You really are the king of oversimplifcation and blanket statements. What you're saying might be right on some basic level, that raising your kids right is a good thing to do, but it doesn't take any nuance or consideration of conditional circumstances into account.

"If you did X, then Y would always happen without exception" rarely ever applies to the real world.

 

[macs4nw]

So are they going after Google now too??? They should shouldn't they? I would think Android apps are guilty of the same thing. Something seems so wrong with this whole thing. Apple really seemed to do the right thing and is still being punished (again).

Silly.. the FTC goes after the bright lights, someone will probably get a promotion for getting Apple to agree to this, just like the Justice Dept.

Can Apple do more to make sure kids don't make in-app purchases? Maybe!

Can parents do more to see what their kids are doing at such a young age? Definitely!

Agreed x3! Although they are not overstepping their bounds, it seems a little heavy-handed of the FTC to come after a company that has already settled a class action lawsuit, and additionally is committed to, and already in the process of making the necessary changes to prevent these unauthorized IAPs.