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How To Prevent Accidental App Purchase On iPhone

By on January 13, 2011 in Posted In: iPad, iPhone, Tips & How-to

My four year old daughter simply loves my iPhone. In fact, there are days when she ends up using it more than I do. She has her own little world of Talking Tom, Angry Birds, Tap Tap Revenge, Read Me Stories and a plethora of other interesting games. While I don’t mind her playing games and solving puzzles on my iPhone, I was in for a rude shock last week when I received several emails titled “Your receipt #xyz” from iTunes Store. These mails were followed by a scary credit card statement which I could hardly believe.

One quick look at the receipts and I knew that my little one had accidentally made several in-app purchases. Needless to say, the damage had been done and the next thing I did was to look for a solution to prevent such accidental In-app purchases for future.

Like several other users who’ve been victims of unexpected charges from in-app purchases, I too never bothered to figure out how to turn them off till this harsh reality hit me. As I discovered a couple of days later, it’s actually quite simple to turn off in-app purchases – simply go to Settings -> General -> Restrictions (enter your 4-digit security pass code) -> Allowed Content -> In-App Purchases and turn the damn thing to OFF!

If you’ve not set a 4-digit security code on your iPhone, now is a good time as ever to do so. Kids love clicking various buttons on the iPhone touchscreen and you can never rule out the possibility of accidental app purchases, therefore it’s better to be safe than sorry. And trust me, accidental app purchases are fairly common especially with kids!

Usually, the in-app purchases require the iTunes password to be entered. But if you’ve already entered the password in the last 15 minutes even for a free app, the in-app purchase does not prompt for password again. While some apps are generous enough to refund the money for accidental purchases within a stipulated duration (usually 24 hours), a majority of such apps are happy to gobble it up.

Have you been a victim of accidental in-app purchases? If so, please share your experience by leaving us a comment.

About Gaurav Kheterpal

Gaurav Kheterpal is a seasoned technology professional with nearly a decade of experience in Mobile, Web 2.0 and Open Source Technologies. He's an Apple fanboy and an iPhone lover/ critic since it's early days. He loves exploring, developing and reviewing iPhone apps, as well as covering news stories about Apple and its products.
View all posts by Gaurav Kheterpal →

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  • http://www.twitter.com/MrMBerman MrMBerman

    Thank you, I never knew the option was there, now I just need to get my hands on my wife’s iPod touch.

  • PKO

    Thanks for the tip, these accidental purchases usually happen with in-built links from the apps for add-on’s. I remember my daughter buying some food for a puppy app for $4.99 and I realized it only after I got the receipt email.

  • MrTichy

    the “top free” game on iTunes called Bubble Ball, charged 99 cents with no warning whatsoever. And you were right I just logged in to iTunes store before downloading the game, so I wasn’t asked to confirm inapp purchase or confirm my iTunes password.

  • Kristen

    My 8 year old racked up 283.33 in app purchases from my iPad for berries on her smurf village……283.33 ON BERRIES ?!?!?. When I looked at my bank account online I was shocked. I called apple and the only way to get ahold of support for billing was through email. I thought “oh great this is going to take forever.” within 4 hours I had gotten a response back from apple and they credited my account back! In app purchases are too easy for kids to rack up the bill….all they have to know is your iTunes password. Apple should make the in app purchase verification of account using the cvv oN the billing credit card. Kids are too smart these days!

  • Rebecca

    Thanks for posting this information. I too was victim of charges on my itunes account for crap i did not want and was unaware i ordered. This was very helpful.

  • Anne

    Thank you so much for sharing this!! I have been looking for hours and hours at the apple support website but found nothing! My 4 year old daughter upgraded the talking tom, cut the rope (which is okay), kids mandarin, and more!! Although they are cheap, it is still worth something if they all summed up.

  • Dawn

    Hi there! I opened up my email this morning and got a huge surprise! I had a $104.99 charge to my credit card for some in game coins for Farm Story! OUCH! I found your article and applied the setting. I had no idea it was even there! Thank you! I also contacted Apple Support about a possible refund. I haven’t heard back from them yet but I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

  • Nat

    Thank you so much!!! I was so surprised how easy it was!!!

  • Miky

    I have also protected restriction with passcode but I made it a year ago and I lost the code. Now I can’t chage location preferences and my navigation software, when installed was turned to off.
    Someone knows how can i change or find the 4 digit pin code. I don’t want to reset everything and lost all my sms and call history.

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