Public Service Announcement

I feel obligated to pass along a lesson that I learned painfully this morning.  Every parent or adult who may find their iPhone in the hands of a minor needs to read this cautionary tale.  It started last night when Matt came to me asking if he could download the game, Temple Run 2, on my iPhone.  "Is it free?"  "Yes."  "Sure."  He found it in the App Store and I typed in my password to authorize the download.  He sat on the couch and played for a little while and then we all happily went to bed.

I got up this morning and checked my email on my phone and found 17 emails from the Apple iTunes store containing invoices congratulating me on my in-app purchases for Temple Run 2 totaling $358.27!!!!!!  Luckily for Matt, he was still asleep and I had to go to work.  I called Apple and told them what happened and, thankfully, they are refunding the charges and gave me instructions for how to prevent it from happening again - because they only give the refund once.  And now I will pass those instructions on to you.

Click on the Settings icon...

Click on General...

Click on Restrictions...

Slide the In-App Purchases to Off and change the Require Password option from 15 minutes to Immediately.

The default is to prompt for your password when you purchase something and after that it will not ask for your password for 15 minutes.  If you make another purchase during those 15 minutes it restarts the clock and you can purchase to your little 7 year old heart's content.  This change will prompt for your password for every purchase.

*No 7 year olds were harmed in the making of this PSA, although one was grounded for many days.