Woman sues Google after her kids rack up $66 of in-app charges without her consent

Phandroid

Woman sues Google after her kids rack up $66 of in-app charges without her consent

It was only in January earlier this year that Apple found themselves in hot water after the FTC held the tech giant responsible for kids making in-app purchases without their parents’ consent. According to the complaint, this was made possible thanks to Apple’s now revoked 15-minute window policy, a security feature that made it possible for a user to enter their password once every 15-minutes when making purchases.

It was a case we knew would eventually find itself on Google’s doorstep and sure enough, here’s comes another lawsuit. A New York woman is suing Google after alleging that her kids made $65.95 of unauthorized in-app purchases on her account while playing Marve’s Run Jump Smash. Once again, a password window is to blame, only Google’s is a bit more lax than what was once offered by Apple. In Google’s window, users are only required to enter their passwords once every 30 minutes when making purchases.

In order for this woman to have a case, she must have made a purchase for her children by initially entering in her password, only to later find out that her kids made additional purchases during Google’s 30-minute window. It’s something Google doesn’t notify users of at the time of purchase, although they do detail the window on their Google Play support page.

According to the paper work, she feels Google is “unfairly profiting” from the hundreds of freemium titles in the Play store that make it possible for children to make “unauthorised charges for in-app game currency without parents’ knowledge.” The case goes onto list games that allow for huge in-app purchases of up to $100. It’s easy to see how a kid can rack up huge charges in less than 30 minutes time.

Seems like a pretty big problem for something so easily fixed. Simply prompting the user to enter a password for every purchase would be a bit a nuisance, but it’s a first world problem that seems necessary when in-app purchases are reaching triple digits.

Can’t say we see this going too good for Google. Expect a similar turn out as Apple’s case.

[GigaOM]

more info...