In App Purchases and your Kids.

12.22.10 Posted in Hints and Tips by Mathew

Many of our clients have children, and these days, most of them end up with the iPods or iPhones as they move through their teenage years. One of the traps we are seeing is kids racking up huge bills via what is known as in app.

Many games available for devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch take advantage of a model where they sell you things to use in the game, after giving you the game for free. In many cases, it’s not obvious to the user that they are buying things with real money, as the purchases are often couched in fictional currency.

To get an idea, read about how a four year old playing smurfs started costing his mum money.

The best way to avoid the problem, is to disable the ability to purchase things within an app, and here’s how you do it;

Go to the SETTINGS section of your iOS device, and choose GENERAL

Next, tap on ENABLE RESTRICTIONS. The device will them ask you to enter a four digit pin code, which you will need later to turn this off again if you want to. As long as your children don’t know the code, they cannot enable in app purchases.

Once thats done, just scroll down to IN APP PURCHASES, and turn them off!

That’s it! Now your safe from surprise charges.