Apple may face legal action over in-app purchases by children
19 Jul 2014
Apple may face legal action after failing to tackle the problem of children racking up huge bills by making in-app purchases, according to the European Commission.
According to the commission's latest findings into how internet giants charged for programs downloaded onto tablets and mobile phones, the commission declared that Apple had not committed to changing its policies.
The EC's main concern was that games were often labelled as "free to download" but were not "free to play", with automatic debits of purchases from a registered credit card.
The commission said that over half of online games in the EU were advertised as "free", even as many carried hidden costs.
In one case, an eight-year-old UK girl managed to run up a bill of £4,000 making "in-app" purchases from games such as My Horse and Smurfs' Village, in which the company reimbursed the girl's father.
Apple has been asked by the commision to comply on four key points:
- Consumers should not be misled by ''free'' claims about the true costs involved;
- There should be no direct exhortation to children to buy items in a game or to persuade an adult to buy items for them;
- Adequate information about payment arrangements for purchases should be given to the consumers. Payment should not be debited through default settings without explicit consent of consumers
- An email address should be provided to consumers to allow them to contact the concerned traders in case of queries or complaints.
Meanwhile, Google and Apple, along with the games industry body Interactive Software Federation, were asked by the EC to provide fixes to these problems, and according to the commission, the internet ad giant had implemented numerous changes.
"These include not using the word 'free' at all when games contain in-app purchases, [and] developing targeted guidelines for its app developers to prevent direct exhortation to children," the EC stated.
Default settings had also been suitably tweaked to ensure authorisation was requested before each in-app purchase, so those unexpected four-figure payments on the monthly credit card statement did not materialise.
However, Apple had failed to respond and decided take no action, according to the EC.
"Although, regrettably, no concrete and immediate solutions have been made by Apple to date to address the concerns, in particular payment authorisation.
"No firm commitments and no timings have been provided for the implementation of possible future changes," the EC declared.
