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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't call it out very loudly, but...

"to a company credit card the father had saved to his own Google account, which his son also used"

It sounds like the son didn't have an account. It was just the father's account, with billing info attached with no limits.

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But how was the 9 year old able to do any of this unless they had access to some account?

It says his son also used it, so he gave a 9 year old access to it. Same difference.

Question is if it’s reasonable for the father to guess letting the kid use the account would let the kid do this kind of charge. I would say no and put the blame on google.

As a parent, I would say yes. Anyone who has kids know they spend any money you give them access to. I daughter spent $100 on snacks in a week because it on her school swipe account. Kids are just like this. My kid has her own kids google account where all purchases have to be approved explicitly by me, the parent account. The dad could have done that, but he didn't. This is literally why kids accounts exist. There are many horror stories about kids spending their parents money going bad decades. Every parent has a story. There's no way the dad couldn't have considered this as a possibility. This is setting aside that he shouldn't have mixed his work cards with his personal accounts.

Yes, I'm saying the father just let the son use his own account. He didn't bother making a child's account for his son. That's at the root of this.

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