Mobile bill shock through kids in-app purchases

bigpigsmummy

Fire_Fox wrote: »

So why is it so many adults have time to play games on smartphones and social networking sites, but don't have time to cook meals from scratch instead relying on ready meals, horsemeat and all? Or are these different adults?

Wonder how long until there is a scandal about 'children' gambling on their parents' phones or tablets and wiping out their current accounts?

I probably won't get chance to catch up on this for another 6 months but here's my two penith worth - i do cook meals from scratch!

My son managed £95.00 with 'jetpackjoyride' in 20 mins!
Looking at what he did there is no currency listed at all! He thought he was getting imaginary coinage.

Is this legal surely if you're purchasing something then at least the seller needs to put in a £ sign somewhere? All there was on show was numbers with a decimal point that was the next page from 'get more coins' - no mention of changing from imaginary money to real money until you pressed the 'buy' button by which time you've had an email sent congratulating you on your purchase!

bigpigsmummy

Actually read the following...

My son managed £95.00 with 'jetpackjoyride' in 20 mins!
Looking at what he did there is no currency listed at all! He thought he was getting IMAGINARY coinage.

Is this legal surely if you're purchasing something then at least the seller needs to put in a £ sign somewhere? All there was on show was numbers with a decimal point that was the next page from 'get more coins' - no mention of changing from imaginary money to real money until you pressed the 'buy' button by which time you've had an email sent congratulating you on your purchase!

I'm self employed and so is my hubby so we always look for the price, but even we were flumaxed by the deception of hiding the actual price of a purchase under the thin veil of gettng more coins!

Can MSE look into the legal side of all these one click apps?

bigpigsmummy

Can MSE look into the use of these apps to see if it is legal to sell a product or app without the use of a currency logo?

Thats how we got a £95.00 bill on Iphone & 'jetpackjoyrider'

securityguy

dodiddlydee wrote: »

3. after setting up your card details and they have been varified, log back into your account and change the 3 digit CSV number to something different, the varification process does not run again.

Now you and your kids will be able to download free apps but paid apps/songs/films etc will fail because the transaction will not go through.

This won't work (or, more to the point, subsequent purchases will work), and I seriously doubt you've even tried this before cutting and pasting it.

Merchants don't store the CVV. To do so would be a blatant breach of PICS compliance and would get the merchant's ability to perform credit card transactions yanked.

When a card is used for the first time, the CVV is requested from the user and passed to the card processor. The card processor checks it. If the transaction succeeds, then the merchant knows that the CVV was correct. For subsequent automatic transactions on that card, they simply pass over the details without the CVV, relying on the fact that previous transactions worked --- the processor will accept the transaction, and the merchant swallows the very small additional risk. If at any point you supply a valid CVV, subsequent automatic transactions will succeed. Merchants do not store the CVV.

Johnmcl7

I think some of this article is a bit dubious particularly the dismissal of passwords:

The problem with in-app purchases is kids often only need to memorise one password to spend. And as even 6-year-olds are tech-savvy these days, they often know their parents' passwords without their parents' knowledge.

I don't buy this for a second, while I do love the idea of six years old hacking into their parent's devices in secret because they're so tech savvy(!) that's clearly not the case. They don't need to be tech savvy to memorise a password but it would have to be shown to them, if someone is typing in a password very slowly in full view of their children then they're asking for trouble and even the if that did happen, changing the password immediately would prevent it being an issue. In reality though I suspect the explanation is the rather more obvious one that parents are giving the password to children which defeats the purpose of the security in the first place.

I think the article should highlight people to be more cautious with their credit cards as it isn't just children that can take advantage of those stored credit card details, there's been various big hacks over the last couple of years and the companies themselves can't necessarily be trusted either (such as Microsoft and their 'generous' auto-renew system).

AAAAA

epredator wrote: »

We fell foul of this same sort of scam.

You couldn't have fallen for this scam since it is not a scam,it is a perfectly legitimate business model.:money::money::money::money:

bylromarha

Another non story MSEteam - parents need to be parents in this matter, not blame the companies.

dodiddlydee

securityguy wrote: »

This won't work (or, more to the point, subsequent purchases will work), and I seriously doubt you've even tried this before cutting and pasting it.

After your concerns I tried this again, it still works on my ipod touch IOS5 but it doesn't work on ipad IOS6 which tries to varify the CVV number every time it's changed and purchases do indeed go through despite attempting to make details invalid.
Sorry

delain

securityguy wrote: »

No you didn't have to. You chose to, having similarly chosen to get her a device which had that requirement. If you don't like it, there are endless solutions, including pre-pay debit cards, gift vouchers, getting her a bank account with a debit card (available normally from age 12) and not letting her have the thing in the first place.

I didn't buy it for her someone else did for christmas. I wasn't very happy about it to be honest. She is not 12. She is only allowed free apps so why would I buy a gift card?! The point is I'm not going to spend a fortune on rubbish.

carmel11

Really useful post, thanks.