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Comment by _1qd4 | Hacker News Reader

Compare this to the real world. You are in a store and your child heads to the counter with $3,000 worth of goods. He puts your credit card on the counter. At this point, the clerk would ask if mommy or daddy were around and probably would deny the purchase.

But the digital world? Come right up little johnny!

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How to tell the difference between an adult and a kid online assuming the adult gave their credit card to the kid?

That’s something for these businesses to figure out. In the real world, we had the advantage of the card holder needing to be present.

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)

I don't think that's too much to ask. If I spend more than an extra £10 my phone company will start sending me messages. Plenty of families would be financially crippled by an unexpected £3000 bill.

Actually, that's a great point. In Canada, we passed legislation that caps the amount a phone company can charge you in a billing period. We ought to do something similar for micro transaction businesses (though I loathe the appearance of a dialog box - "You have reached the daily spending limit as permitted by your jurisdiction")

More importantly, how to at the same time make payment as frictionless and password-free, so that you do not lose any business to people having second thoughts or going to competitors!

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.

it's not spending $3000 at once, but $5 at a time. imagine a large store with 10 cashiers, the kid coming to each cashier once per day. that means over the course of a week the kid can spend several hundred dollars without anyone noticing anything unusual.

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