Amazon Liable For Kids’ In-App Purchases

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The Federal Trade Commission has decided that Amazon is liable for in-app purchases made by children in games purchased on the Appstore. This one here is kind of a no-brainer, even though I think parents are ultimate responsible, Amazon kinda drug its feet at every chance on this one.

“Amazon’s argument conflates complaints with the total universe of injury,” writes the judge. “However, given the design of the Appstore and procedures around in-app purchases, it is reasonable to conclude that many customers were never aware that they had made an in-app purchase.” The judge was equally unmoved by Amazon’s claim that customers should have known about the in-app purchases and that they were “reasonably avoidable,” noting that “it is unreasonable to expect customers to be familiar with the potential to accrue in-app purchases while using apps labeled as ‘FREE.'”
 
There are so many controls in place for this. It is parents not monitoring their kids, this is just another case of stupid parents and blaming someone else.
 
Yep, total fail by parents.

Or maybe the parents are too dumb to be able to tell that when an app installs, says there are in-app purchases, and then set up their phone so that no login info is required before any purchases can be made, apps/games to be installed, etc. and then let their kids use the phone, install games, and do whatever.

Stupid idiots. The whole lot of them.
 
Laziness is the root cause of all of this. People are too busy to type in their password each time so they opt to keep apps signed in all the time.

That 8 character password is too time consuming.
 
Steve said:
noting that “it is unreasonable to expect customers to be familiar with the potential to accrue in-app purchases while using apps labeled as ‘FREE.'” [/I]
Click to expand...

Yeah. too hard to read, too hard to understand, too hard to not walk into oncoming traffic. People really need to take responsibility for the things they do. If Amazon is held liable the users shouldn't be allowed to own a device that's too complicated to understand.
 
The blind stupidness and insensitivity of the posters here is incredible.
There will be no end of tech illiterate users, Mums etc that will end up using this service, many not of their own choosing but because their partner made it so.
Its about time tech was forced to stop abusing these people.
 
Honestly, how hard would it be to enforce a password before making monetary in-app purchases? Not that it's completely Amazon's fault, but a child should never be able to make in-app purchases without a parent's consent or credit card information. I don't care how convenient it is, there shouldn't be an option otherwise.
 
I don't get it. I know people are stupid, but come on. If I had kids and they made an in app purchase they would be done with that devise period. I would not blame the company, I would blame myself as a parent. I am sick of all this blame someone else bullshit. Tell the parents to pay the bill and then maybe they will learn. This doesn't teach kids anything but to blame someone when they make a mistake. If I would have done this as a kid I would have been smacked, "HARD". You can't do that now 'cause some pussy out there would call it abuse tho.
 
Set purchase code lock, don't let child know what it is. It's very easy to do on both Android and Amazon devices. Parenting isn't actually that hard.
 
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