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Comment by filoleg | Hacker News Reader

Another one of those oversensationalized outrage articles that can be boiled down to "I cannot put even a minimal effort in keeping an eye on my children, so I will blame someone else for it and make it their responsibility." There is literally a setting on iOS for that specific specific scenario, which allows to prevent in-app purchases[0]. And it is very easy and intuitive to set up too, so it isn't like it is hidden behind millions of menus and dark patterns.

0. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204396

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I've been in IT Admin for years, and one of my kids managed to subscribe to two things in one day, one that cost $10 per month and one that was $78 per year, despite having exactly these kinds of controls already set on the device.

Thankfully I receive a notification email for activity on the account, so I was able to go through the non-obvious method of unsubscribing before the "three-day free trial" expired when the charges would have started.

The device was setup to require a password for in-app purchases. They even need a password to install new, free apps. I've since locked down the devices even harder, having looked up various guides on all the various settings that need to be changed from their very open defaults.

I've also removed credit card details from the shared family account - which can't be done from the device itself, only via the online account management tool.

I still don't know how those subscriptions got through, but they did.

Thanks for the reminder though, I'm going to check through those settings again, just to make sure they're still tight, and haven't been re-opened by a software update or other "insecure by default" situation.

I can't imagine how far outside 'normal' this level of IT device maintenance is for regular folk.

Android is worse still, there is still no good way to implement parental controls that cant be circumvented by a few minutes on google.

> "I cannot put even a minimal effort in keeping an eye on my children, so I will blame someone else for it and make it their responsibility."

For centuries, it's been trivially possible for parents to manage their children's access to funds. Nineteenth century homesteaders could send their kids off to market with appropriate funds to buy what they needed. Now all of a sudden this doesn't work and kids by default have access to near infinite (at their scales) lines of credit because of internet purchasing.

Why is this burden suddenly on the parents? Why can't app vendors (and in particular their middlemen who manage the purchases) make even a minimal effort at not having this system be broken by default?

> Nineteenth century homesteaders could send their kids off to market with appropriate funds to buy what they needed. Now all of a sudden this doesn't work and kids by default have access to near infinite (at their scales) lines of credit because of internet purchasing.

Huh? The old model is working just as well as ever. Why would you give your kid your credit card? Have them make their internet purchases with a gift card, the non-insane way.

Almost all major credit cards have a system to generate virtual card numbers with dollar limits on them. Generate a virtual card number with some limit, give to the kid or configure it on their device. Every time you need to increase the limit you have to login on a site that only the parent has access to.

Is toggling a single simple menu setting before handing off your portable computer you use for managing your life to your child considered a legitimate burden?

>Why can't app vendors (and in particular their middlemen who manage the purchases) make even a minimal effort at not having this system be broken by default?

Apple put an effort into making it all locked behind a simple menu setting, which to me looks about as functional and non-broken as it can get. I don't know what more can one expect from a company, aside from being able to read the mind of whoever is using the device at the moment and automatically adjust permissions based on that.

locked behind a simple menu setting

It's not simple, on iPad anyway. There are various layers of menus and options and some aren't as 'blanket' on/off as they appear

looks about as functional and non-broken as it can get

iPads, at least, can't even accurately track usage time in their own device. We've got time limits set on overall device usage time and specific app times, and it's woefully inaccurate, and that function is part of the same 'device control' app / settings area that looks after lock-down settings for in-app payments and new app installations etc.

That's why I've removed any credit card details from the Apple account.

Kids can use gift cards, and if you do use a credit card for an account your kid (or spouse... or parent) is using then you can remove your card after the purchase.I've been doing it for years, on a few different platforms, with no issue.

That said I do wish there was an easier way to say "don't ever save my card info" It's clearly a dark pattern, and I routinely get furious about the loopholes I have to jump through .

Because they're making a lot of money with the way it is? Most people who catch their kid spending $100 on a game aren't going to try to contact customer service to get their money back, they're gonna scold the kid.

That is a horrible example, homesteaders give their children an appropriate amount to purchase goods, a better example of parents who fall victim to their children purchasing in app purchase would be a homesteader that gave their child access to their family fortune while believing a child could make a correct financial decision.

You whooshed on the point. The obvious way to get some lard from the market is to hand Eustice 40 cents and send her off. The obvious way to let Ernesto play a game is to hand him your phone (no, it's not the only way, but be real: it's the obvious first choice for nontechnical users).

What's happened is that the default mode for usage has changed from "Here's a dollar for candy" to "Here's access to the family fortune". And that's bad. And it's not the fault of Ernesto's parents, it's the fault of the technology vendors.

Why can’t the parents set the account up with no credit card and top the account up with gift cards that you can buy online and in most supermarkets?

I set up my brothers’ account like this and he used it until he was around 14/15 and old enough to know the consequences of spending all your money. Then we linked it up to _his_ debit card. We allowed for something like £10 a month on the App Store, and about £100 a year on the Xbox store with the gift card method.

The limit of the budget taught him not to spend all his money at once or he would have none left. But a lot of parents seem to think these companies should do the parenting for them because they can’t be bothered.

Its written in a click-bait style (what news story isn't these days?) but the only take-home here for parents is that smartphone==credit card. The other issue is that usually for physical credit cards, its easy for a parent to keep it off limits. But if you're signed into services that can auto-charge you, things are a bit more tricky. Even if you had a separate account for your child, and only use a CC to authorize on a per-transaction basis, services can auto-save your CC info, and bury this fact inside some 20 page ToS.

It's also that even if you do hide your credit card, your child only needs to take possession of it once to have it auto-saved somewhere.

That is true, I guess I was thinking more of a "stole $10 from the kitchen drawer to buy candy" kind of child, not a "impersonated dad, and wired entire life savings to russia" kind of child.

Rifling through a wallet for cash and doing it for the credit card in the next pocket are basically the same action to a child who doesn't know better. And it's not like it's a good or reasonable idea for parents to come home and lock up their wallet in a safe.

> boiled down to "I cannot put even a minimal effort in keeping an eye on my children, so I will blame someone else for it and make it their responsibility."

When you add multiple devices/platforms/app stores it becomes a lot more difficult. Sure it is a relatively seamless experience on one platform, but not all of them. Additionally, parents who didn't grow up with cellphones don't even think about this stuff until it happens. It isn't common sense for them.

These games were not just on Apple's platform. I think these types of games are predatory. What is wrong with just selling a whole game? It is hard to find any game these days that comes out complete. Blizzard did it with Star Craft 2 and for that reason, I refused to buy it.

There are plenty of games you can buy on the iOS store. What's wrong with buying a whole game?

Even "whole" games (like the latest $60 FIFA release) have unlimited microtransactions. And it's not limited to iOS, or Android. It's on most internet connected platforms.

I agree with your point about non-apple platforms. I cannot enumerate all of them, but it would be silly of me to expect all of them to handle that scenario gracefully, and I believe they should be required to.

However, Starcraft 2 is complete and been this way since the inception. They added microtransactions years after the full release, and they all boil down to cosmetics and other completely optional and non-necessary things, like skins and banners, i.e. cosmetics. Something for hardcore fans to buy in order to support their game, but absolutely non-essential for the actual full experience. And I am saying that as someone who hasn't spent a single dime on Starcraft 2, aside from buying the full game on release (+the expansions that came out years later) and putting hundreds of hours into it.

They mean the fact that the game came out in instalments, which is a ridiculous complaint and has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Considering that each installment might as well been a different game, just using the same engine and graphics, I agree that it is a ridiculous complaint. Each installment had a 12hr+ single player campaign + 12hr+ co-op campaign + completely different multiplayer experience.

Companies do it because you make more money for less effort, it's called games as a service. Instead of having to develop a game from scratch every few years and hope the income lasts until their next release, they create a game that they can use as a platform for expansions and microtransactions to provide consistent income over 7-10 years. Young gamers are getting so used to it that I've seen them call people entitled and unreasonable for calling out the devs on missing features at launch. They'll say things like "The game just came out 2 months ago, why do you expect them to have already added feature X to the game?" As someone who started out with Nintendo games that had no possibility of having new features added, that mentality is baffling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service

> " Young gamers are getting so used to it "

Young consumers of all sorts are participants in a war many of them don't even realize exists. A war in which their opposition are marketing professionals, trained in psychology in universities to trick and exploit children. Against this, a lot of kids don't stand a chance. And it seems the marketers sleep at night by blaming the parents for failing to protect their children from predators like themselves, or by making what they (mistakenly) believe to be favorable analogies to other predatory industries targeting children, such as "collectable card games" or 900 number "video game tip lines."

> And it is very easy and intuitive to set up too, so it isn't like it is hidden behind millions of menus and dark patterns.

Disagree on the basis that neither "Screen Time" nor "Content & Privacy Restrictions" are terms that imply having anything to do with spending money.

They could have a top-level settings item called "Parental Controls" and they choose not to.

Defaults matter. We say this all over the place when designing interfaces. None of these solutions being proposed are the "default". The "default" is to make it as simple and straightforward as possible to give the platforms and developers money.

Worse, all it takes is one mistake on one device to open up a whole can of financial woe when it comes to a child on a device.

In-app purchases should be off by default.

They are unless you add a card, and sign in, and enable the ability to pay without using your password.

most children are using their parents' apple IDs.

So you are admitting that the default users of those phones are adults. In which case, it makes sense that the defaults are set for adults. If an adult is handing their phone (with a credit card enabled on it) to their child, it is expected that they should think of things that can go wrong and disable in-app purchases. If a parent cannot even attempt to keep an eye on what their child is doing on their phone OR click a simple menu setting that disables in-app purchases, I would personally worry about their child way beyond what they can do on their phone.

Games with randomized spending of real money should be classified as “gambling” and treated appropriately. Then it’s safe to blame the parents. At the moment, games are transitioning from an entertainment product suitable for anyone to a gambling product only for adults. It’s hard to keep track of which game series have made this transition or not, so I don’t blame the parents too much.

It's immoral to exploit children under any circumstances, even (especially!) when the child has neglectful or careless parents.

I agree that this is preventable but you can't assume that everyone knows these things, especially when there is an article like this that doesn't contain any help or advice! Of all people the BBC should be using this opportunity to help people.

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