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Kids can put their parents into big trouble, even when they are playing innocently. Five year old British child Danny Kitchen has proved that. Recently this 5 year old genius spent his parents’ £1,700 (about $2,550) on purchasing iTunes app within 15 minutes for playing “free games” on iPad and fell their parents into big “trouble”. Details inside.

Danny wanted to play a free game on his father’s iPad. After continuous pleading, his father Greg Kitchen entered his iTunes password on the iPad so that his son could download a “free” iPad game from the App Store and play. Danny downloaded a “free” iPad game called Zombies vs Ninja from the App Store but while he was playing, he unknowingly ordered dozens of costly In-App Purchase which cost a total £1,710.43 (around $2550) by repeatedly clicking on the “in-app purchase” button. Danny had no idea that each tap was costing his father’s credit card £69.99 (about $105). However, within 15 minutes, Danny had accumulated more than $2,500 in charges.

Danny as well as his parents were totally unaware of this matter. The following day, Danny’s parents received multiple emails from iTunes advising them of the purchases, but seeing as each one looked the same, they assumed these were sent in error and they ignored. But when they received a call from the credit card company, they understood what had actually happened.

After three days of communication back and forth with Apple, the Kitchen family was able to get Apple to reverse all the charges since they quickly reported the unwanted purchases. But it is not clear yet how Danny Kitchen was able to purchase in-app content if his father had only entered the account password to download an app, as Apple separated app and in-app purchases with iOS 4.3 two years ago. The Kitchen’s password should have been required a second time before in-app purchase could be downloaded.

However, though Apple refunded the charges, the incident highlights the dangers of free games aimed at young children. If you have a little Danny in your family and you want to ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen to you, you can disable in-app purchases by going into Settings => General => Restrictions.

Source: BBC, Digital Trends

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