Not defending any particular app's behaviour. Without any first hand knowledge, I certainly believe that there are scummy games out there using dubious methods to get people to rack up IAP.
> It was on his own phone and he managed to [...] enter his own children's bank card details and buy lots of in-game items.
> It turned out my wife had left herself logged into Google Play on her old phone that she'd given to our youngest daughter.
[1] I'm not sure if this is a cultural thing. At least in my coutry almost no one has a credit card (it's more common to use debit cards + virtual credit cards) so I find the concept of "giving your CC to your child" really weird.
These systems are set up so you really don’t have much choice, though. My son will come to me and say, “Dad, I have some money from Grandma, can I use it to buy willywhacker 2 for my iPod?” I’ll say, “sure” - then he’ll hand me the $5 he got from Grandma and I’ll type my credit card number into wherever the game expects it to be and try to check the “don’t remember this card for future use” check box (if it’s there and if the game actually honors it). My kids are really good about asking before they make purchases, but a lot of these apps are designed to trick you - that’s how they make profits.
In the third world you always to watch yourself so you don't hurt, scammed or abused with little recourse. So being curious, doing something different or challenging the status quo becomes a liability. Eventually there isn't much development at all, only corruption and people knowing their place.
When you buy something in a store with cash in person, after having it shown by an employee, you can still in most cases return the thing at your will. But when some clicks a button moving a few bytes with a digital payment that in reality costs nothing, there is of course nothing that can be done. This industry is just increasingly rubbish.
Don't click this, don't open that e-mail and don't answer the phone. You don't know who it is from or who it is going to. Don't have that password, don't type it there, don't have it too long and don't make it too short. We can automate your job, but not authentication. Don't publish that, don't vote like this and don't live here. Know your place.
(At least my banks haven't offered virtual cards for many years).
Better financial tools/primitives would have gone a long way to prevent the issue in the article which most Americans don't have. I shouldn't need my bank to hopefully create a "virtual card" feature (it doesn't). It should've been ubiquitous 20+ years ago.
This is one reason I use Paypal: I can see a list of organizations authorized to take money out of my account. My bank account and credit cards? I have no fucking idea who might show up next month. Maybe that thing I "canceled" on their website four months ago?
Or I use bitcoin because it's basically cash.
I have less sympathy for the high-school and college kids who did this.
Much like a three-years-old should not have an ability to light matches, or push a screwdriver into a power socket, or operate a chainsaw.
It sounds like many games are set up to 1) encourage you to enter account information at some point and 2) not make it obvious when you are going to spend more "real" money.
Obviously these situations could be avoided in various ways, but I think it's being pretty hard on parents of young kids to blame them entirely for "falling for" scenarios that are pretty dodgy. Especially if you are a) a technologist of some sort and b) don't have kids, I would really think carefully before deciding the parents are 100% at fault.
I see how being a parent of a young and active kid can be exasperating. But, if anything, it should increase the level of healthy paranoia :)
Am I the only one that is impressed by a 3 year old knowing how to use a credit card online. I have trouble, at times, getting all 16 digits correct--depending on the past week's workload.
I was inspired by this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=auzLhKvsxnQ
I always had multiple accounts but this vid and a discussion with friends (bankers and accountants) helped us all develop (each his own) 7 (or more) accounts setup. Imagine a "Dave Ramsey envelope system", but online.
The concept just seems to bizzare as someone who has grown up with their country specific bank cards - getting a credit card or even a visa/mastercard debit card is something fairly unusual.
I do realize you american people have to build a credit score and there's cashback schemes. Very different cultures I guess
Presence and pin? How does that work online? Even if it's pin only, aren't you still screwed if you get phished?
Not good security is it? They can take their time to scan/photograph the cards etc, while in Europe the card's details are for seconds and right in front of you.
Debit Card = money in the bank.
I am not trashing the credit industry, but when they give me 1% and I give them 24%...
And in the UK I do get a refund for fraudulent purchases (e.g. someone copied my card details from a store and made some purchases of women's shoes from somewhere in the UK I have never veen) - NatWest flagged it, alerted me, refunded me.
With debit you spend the money you own.
With credit you take debt. On every single payment. You are taking debt. Only at the end of the month you pay your debt.
If you spent too much, (by accident) you now have to pay overdraft interest.
With debit you spend the actual money you own.
If a purchase (fraudulent or not) exceeds your current balance, the payment won’t process.
But that is a good thing.
You shouldn’t be buying things you don’t have the money for anyway...
I've never come close to spending near my limit, so I don't know about an overdraft fee. I assumed it would decline further payments.
My credit card gives me reward points for money spent on it. Having a credit card that I keep paid helps my credit score.
I make some tiny amount of interest on the money in my account each month. I might as well collect that before parting with the money. And it's not like credit card debt accrues daily.
>But that is a good thing.
In case of fraud that's a bad thing because your cash flow is now screwed until the dispute's resolved. What do you do if you have $1000 in the bank, you get a fraudulent charge for $600, and this months rent of $800 is coming up?
with that restriction in place, 2 or 3 accounts is manageable, but 7 almost impossible.
ideally the bank should allow to split your account into sub-accounts. so that nominally (for tax and monitoring purposes) you still have one account, but for money management purposes you have multiple.
But the digital world? Come right up little johnny!
Maybe the model needs to change to force digital currency purchases to happen outside of the game? That way the purchase is divorced from the play and the parents can still retain control.
Or maybe accounts need to be set up in “child mode” by default, which caps spending at $50/month?
Or maybe the game rating agencies can be made to mark all games with micro transactions as Mature (since they basically need an adult present at all times to make decisions about the game)
Because that is the purpose of a smartphone - to funnel the user's money to the true owners of the phone. Any barriers to that must be removed.
To take the credit card is easy .. no Pin code .. nothing does protect the card ..
The article said it was a 22 year old with cerebral palsy using his own account (presumably his own credit card).