Ofcom: Parents, here's how to keep grubby tots from buying Smurfberries Ofcom has posted video guides to turning off in-app purchasing on all the popular mobile platforms, but ads serving premium-rate numbers continue to proliferate uncontrolled. Users, and regulators - the OFT today launched a probe into whether kids were being pressured into buying in-game goodies - are getting wise to in-app …
Whilst the people coming up with ways to hook children into accidentally/unknowingly clicking on ads are amongst the lowest of the low, and deserve to burn in hell along with lawyers and politicians, surely of equal/greater concern is the parent who gives their latest shiny to their two year old in an attempt to "pacify" them? Not to mention that even from the perspective of a two year old the iPhone/iPad must be completely simplistic and fairly boring - no tactile buttons, no smash-proof surfaces, and once covered in slobber won't even work properly...
You are obviously not a parent. Both my son and daughter like playing the odd game, such as Fireman Sam and Angry Birds. 'Symptom or disease' is a sweeping statement, used to describe the use as a pacifier is not correct in the slightest especially when you consider the limited time they may have with the device, such as the time it takes to queue up for a coffee in a shop while they wait at the table.
I always switch to airplane mode before they get the device, yet on occasions I find that the childrens 'game' has tried to access the Internet because somewhere along the line there has been an accidental press of the button.
It is down to parental supervision, but when ad companies target young children in such a way it is wrong. They are taken out of a safe area and an attempt has been made to serve them up ads on a web page and this is embedded in childrens games.
The developers know this without a doubt and could stop it but don't .A simple solution would be to ban in app purchases and diversions to web pages etc on all games and apps targeted at children. The apps could be marked in such a way that they comply with these standards.
The firs developers that do this will make a lot of money.
Yes, because all parents have a smartphone for their two year olds. "Those of a differing opinion must not have children" is an equally sweeping statement, that you don't see the irony is of concern.
The term pacify is entirely appropriate for the concept of giving your phone to your kid to keep them quiet and occupied. The length of time involved doesn't affect the definition of the term.
I concur with the rest of your post though - the devs must be at least partially aware of the issue, the risk of loss of advertisers is (sadly) presumably enough of a deterrent to cause them to turn a blind eye - even the need to enter a password before making a transaction (something I imagine Apple could do at an OS level) would be enough to prevent unwanted purchases...
Lets look forward to alot less apps out there then.
Due to the total devaluation of the software market by Apple which has been compounded by people who don't even want to pay 69p for an app, the only ways left to make back any of the money put into apps is through getting ads and in app purchases.
It may seem like these people are the scum of the earth to you, but from where i am sitting it is businesses as usual and you have no-one but yourself to blame with the current freeloading view that society has.
Well I used to be happy to pay for apps, but that has changed. When you go into a shop, you get to look at what you want to buy to know if it is any good. Not so with "apps".
I bought a Spanish-English dictionary app. It seemed OK looking at the screen shots, and there were loads of comments that it was great. Except; in Spanish, nouns have gender. The dictionary failed to show this. Also it failed miserably as a dictionary, not actually having the meanings of words, and was more akin the list of words in a spell checker.
Fool me, I then went and bought another one, and found that it had similar problems and missed quite a few common words. Could I get my money back, no! Is it possible to see before you buy? No. Where was Apple's customer service? "So you did actually buy the app?" "In that case I'm sorry, but there is nothing I can do"
Result: No more paid-for apps on the ipod.
Some apps (on Android and when I last looked) exist in a free demonstration edition that provides a limited service. If it looks good then you buy the fully functioning product. You also may look at users' reviews.
You also may be able to return an app for a refund immediately after purchase. Again when I last looked at Android apps, I think the time allowed was FIFTEEN MINUTES, which to me seems not really enough at all. I thought Apple was more generous, but still not more than a day? Still, as I say, you can try a demo version.
I think less apps would be great as it stands 99.9% are absolute garbage and I cannot find the rest.
The people doing this are the scum of the earth.
People making the apps worth having make money (Presuming they can be found) if this sort of junk stopped then it is likely more worthwhile apps would be better known.)
Palm OS / Symbian enabled to do everything I wanted to do and because the barrier to entry was higher there was normally one or two apps to perform a certain task which made them easier to find.
Not 2 decent ones and 1000 crappy adware ones that barely work.
To be honest nearly everything I would use would likely still be made if it was totally unfeasable for commercial developers to make apps. (Look at Linux / Meego / Webos for example).
Parasites are never wanted.
Stuff the entire KID aspect of this. When is it acceptable or desirable, from a customer perspective, for a single press on an advert to phone a premium rate number?
I can't think of one LEGITIMATE use of such a thing, it is a scam, pure and simple, aimed at those either too young to read, or too digitally encumbered to retain control of their fingers.
They should be banned outright. No problem with an advert that leads to a webpage or redirects through to the AppStore to an application, but to dial a premium number is never acceptable.
Never, that's when it's acceptable for a single click on an advert to call a number, which explains why a confirmation dialog pops up instead of just dialling it.
You can try it yourself, scroll to the bottom of this page on a mobe, tap the 'Advertise with us' link then tap on the phone number.
Is that child safe? Nope, is it useful for adults? Yes.
When I was that age you were lucky if you had a phone, TV was very rare and the radio was salvation.
We survived.
We could entertain ourselves by going shopping ... with ration coupons in hand.. Yes I did from about the age of 5, down to the corner shop, with list, I could touch, Money I could touch and ration coupons, I could touch.
Sorry but why would anyone give a tiny child several hundred pounds of cost (not necessarily worth) electronics to play with?
The term 'get a life' comes to mind.
The crap and otherwise useless mobile I was sent does operate without a SIM card as a kiddie plaything if you are that desperate. The Nokia Asha 300 phone is horribly useless with a SIM card so perhaps it is a toy.
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Hey, just because you had an awful childhood doesn't mean kids these days have to be miserable.
Guess what, me and my kids have a lot of fun playing games and using apps together. It keeps them occupied too sometimes, just like a book or counting license plates did 40 years ago, and some of the apps and games are educational.
Guess you have to be a bitter old man to see the problem, cause I sure dont!
As a parent I live in a modern age. I have a reasonable job and dont have to worry about scrounging for scrap iron to get a shilling or two for the leccy meter. we dont have to duck behind the sofa when the granada TV man comes round for the telly rent either.
I used to go out on my bike and cycle along the canal for 20miles and back. I wouldnt think twice about going on roads. My kids are not so trusted and the traffic is a fecking nightmare these days. Times change you know? I bet you didnt have to go out tilling the land for your lord either or worry about tithing your chickens for the collector.
I bought the kids a cheap chinapad for £50 on ebay, does the job and no worries about costs. Unfortunately outside of jailbreaking there isnt an apple alternative to this (even second hand alternatives are expensive).
Whilst I am out with the kids and we are waiting for something (perhaps in a long queue or waiting to pick the OH up) I pass my phone to the kids to play on. I suppose when I was a kid I was told to shut up and keep quiet and stood there being bored.
I'm riled by the lack of pragmatism from parents whose nippers have been caught by the in-app purchase trap. There are a number of things a parent can do to stop this from being possible - like having a decently hard to crack app store password, changing their password every so often, checking their account balance online to make sure no unauthorised activity is going on, or just doing the totally sensible thing of removing your credit card details from a device YOUR CHILD HAS ACCESS TO. I'm all for adding better controls to more granularly restrict certain activities, but you're ultimately undertaking a massive level of risk by giving a device to your child that's linked to your bank account. Wallets are not toys, why should phones be?
"It is down to parental supervision, but when ad companies target young children in such a way it is wrong."
From an ethical perspective I'd agree, but companies have been doing this for decades and the more integrated technology becomes with our lives the more creative extracting money from children's pockets will be, and the further ahead of regulators and authorities the ad boys will be.
Ultimately the price of security is convenience, and vice versa - choose your poison.
sure as a savvy person that is what most of us would do. Not so for my mum (who we pointed towards the apple store knowing they are simple AND easy to use but can skype and receive emails). She hasnt a clue about adverts, rogue dialers and whatnot. She shouldnt need to either.
IMHO it's more of a chicken-or-egg problem. The mere existence of these scamming 'free apps' puts pressure on honest developers to give their work for free, and the only way left for them to be paid for their work is either to go rogue, or at the very least to allow in-game ads, which in turn are often rogue themselves.
I think that the problem is the system itself. Premium numbers shouldn't be accessible without a security code and a signed written contract. And allowing phones to keep your credit card data and use it automatically whenever an app asks for it, is just suicidal.
The solutions would be a mix of legal and technical ones. Several examples follow:
-ISPs and telcos shouldn't allow the user access to premium services unless they have a copy of a written contract between the user and the owner of the premium service.*(note)
- Phones shouldn't allow any transaction involving the user's credit card number nor access to a premium service without asking for a password from the user, every time the phone tries to access one of these services or send the credit card's data.
- Payment to the premium services by the telcos and ISPs should be delayed until the user receives the invoice, plus one month for complaining/contesting it/whatever.
- ... (add your own)
I don't see these solutions being put in place any time soon, thanks to the usual issues: lobbying, pressure from the telcos on the phone makers and generalized ignorance amongst the public.
* Note: Yes, that alone would mean the disappearance of premium rate services. What's there not to like? :-)
"-ISPs and telcos shouldn't allow the user access to premium services unless they have a copy of a written contract between the user and the owner of the premium service."
While I totally agree with you, this will never happen: can you see telcos cutting off a source of revenue like that?
Not really what led to the freemium model is people making crap games and expecting to make money from them and greed.
People did well enough selling a good game and then if it was a hit selling an expansion or two.
Other people made shareware if they were not well known and they did alright if it was good.
Now everyone wants to be paid in advance or force ad's down peoples throats.
You have a good idea and implement it well then you make money.
Too much junk around that doesn't even deserve to be released (Without a demo).
People don't like to be deceived (Well I don't anyway but people use Facebook so maybe people are ok about it).
I would rather have the internet of old where people just did stuff because they felt like it and there was less stuff that is plain wrong. (Or a really bad idea).
No, they wont. The price of the apps is so low as to be appealing. Very few apps make lots of money. The ingame purchases / adverts / generate that missing revenue directly for the developers.
Rock and a hard place.
Perhaps an age verificaction system may be more appropriate...
Personally, i detest any adverts or ingame purchasing. Its a slimy bastards trick......
I ask this seriously as I guess, like many people, my phone has so many minutes of bundled time to landline and other mobile numbers that it is to all intents and purposes unlimited.
However calls abroad and to premium numbers cost a fortune, but since I never let my kids play with my idevice (but the wife occasionally does hers) it makes me wonder if operators still offer the ability to cap outgoing call costs at £xx ?
Seems to me that that would be an ideal safety measure - cap your outgoing calls and turn off in-app purchases?
Though I do like the idea of turning the device into aeroplane mode prior to handing it over anyway.
Apparently "Capping" is (somehow) not as firm as you would think.
There is (or certainly used to be) a delay of up to a couple of days before the cap kicked in if you went over it.
This is what I like to think of as the mobile phone companies profit margin.
Of course, if you are on PAYG they can instantly detect how much you have used and stop outgoing calls straight away...
My phone contract came with a £50 cap on monthly bills, didn't ask for it, but I like it! I guess they figure with the amount of free minutes and unlimited data there is no real need for more...
I got contacted by them when I went close one month (I knew what I had spent though)
I think all phone contracts should have a monthly cap, and they should ASK you at the time of taking your contract out what you want it to be..
3 do offer a zero cap as I found out this morning. My wife (who is not very tech savvy) has just started an Open University course and when she logged in yesterday a pop up appeared which seemed to come from the OU asking her to complete a short survey about her access to the OU web site. The small print did mention that it was nothing to do with the OU however but failed to mention that putting in your phone number in the survey would sign you up to TextPlayWin which gives you the fantastic chance to win an iPhone or iPad every week for ONLY £4.50 per week. She very quickly realised she had fcuked up and so I had to try and stop it this morning. The phone company said as we had signed up for it they could not cancel it (surely they should be able to stop things being added to your bill!) but they did offer to sign me up to their zero cap feature. You can only enable this once though as I wanted to enable it for a few weeks and then take it off just so that TextPlayWin cannot bombard me with another 10 expensive texts along with a message saying it will take a week to cancel their service (which happened to a friend of mine who got signed up to a similar scam).
I received this "you've won an iPad competition" in-app advert over the weekend (I was playing one of the free angry birds games we've downloaded to an iPad for my 7 year old son).
The worrying thing was that it only required you to enter a mobile phone number to sign up to a expensive subscription service - the advertiser had effectively made the iOS in-app purchase bar and absence of payment card details an irrelevance, they will still get paid until such time as you are able to get the subscription cancelled. My children know our mobile phone numbers and they like to win competitions ...
My 7 year old beat Minecraft and installs mods. Children are naturally clever as they are reality's QA department. And they never tire out, but their attention spans are ludicrously short unless they're doing something you want them to stop doing.
Passing your kid your phone has a tremendous amount of convenience, and they might as well learn technology as early as possible. Life as a kid isn't like it was thirty years ago. Life as a parent isn't either. Most mothers are full-time workers so either parent is usually getting home stuff done when they're not at their job. There's less errand downtime, even more things to do, more things to keep track of, and you drag your kids everywhere with you because you moved to wherever you could find a job, which means the kids' grandparents and other family can't just watch them for you. You're on the run, you're keeping track of Reality's Hyperproductive QA and Drooling Machine, you've only got so many arms, you don't want to lug ten gadgets and toys and stuffed animals with you. Let's be serious, if you don't pass the kid your phone it's because you've already gotten the tyke a tablet.
I remember when the NES was going to be what made society fall apart. We're still ticking...
Whatever provider you use is quite happy to take the money off you, which seems to be the weakness of the "premium rate" system. It's not necessarily taking your card details, it may just be raiding your account or nabbing the PAYG credit. For some reason is they're quite happy to keep doing this, so they'll make you jump through hoops to try to get your money back. As used by scammers for a long time.
The solution would be an opt-in approach, but this would of course affect the revenue flow, so it 'aint going to happen in a hurry is it?
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Was I the only person who read the articles about how the "social game networks" are actually funded by essentially con men, spammers and rip off merchants ?
http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/
This is the same ecosystem that is moving to FTP apps on your mobile phones.
Enjoy.
Maybe I should stop bitching about the Android permissions, then.
I want the ability to personally grant or revoke the requested permissions for apps (e.g. permanently revoke location for the facebook app but allow others it wants).
But at least Android _has_ those permissions and you can choose not to install when it displays what the app wants.
Amazed ios can't (won't) do that
Interestingly, in the last few months lot of apps on Android have started requiring access to the phone, even though the app itself has absolutely no phone related functionality.
I was cross enough about that before, as spyware, but putting 2 and 2 together, I now assume that this is so that they can launch a (premium rate ) call from within the app.
> Amazed ios can't (won't) do that
In the case of location data, you can turn it on and off for individual apps.
It doesn't seem to have the same fine-grained control for enabling phone calls from apps - though the apps can't do this "secretly" i.e. you will be taken from the app to the "dialer app" and (i think) have to press "call" before the call actually starts.
I totally agree that such methods should be banned as they are specifically designed to prey on those who do not know what they are doing by clicking links, etc.
But, at the same time, I fail to see why a very young child (as exampled in the comments) would be given an iphone anyway (or iPad with a sim) - you don't need a sim to play angry birds or play educational software. If you want them to be able to play the apps but not be able to make calls then give them a iPod touch (with no account/payment details attached - as I do with my kids). Having an iPhone means that they are also likely (or have the ability) to call any premium rate number they see anywhere, not just in in-app ads. If you don't want kids making premium rate calls, don't give them something that can make premium rate calls. If they are old enough to need a phone then make sure the premium rate numbers are barred.
This does not detract from my original point that this practice should be banned in any case - in fact I agree with the commentard who said that all premium rate numbers (and texts) should be banned.
"you don't need a sim to play angry birds or play educational software. If you want them to be able to play the apps but not be able to make calls then give them a iPod touch (with no account/payment details attached - as I do with my kids)."
Agree, however, see my comment above about in-app advertising... If your kids know your mobile phone number it doesn't matter whether the device they are using has a SIM in it if it is connected to the internet...
It's possible to offer a service legitimately that is paid for, and puts food on the table figuratively speaking, via a premium rate charge. Unfortunately there also are cheats, and also services that are just expensive and not particularly necessary.
Isn't there a facility to bar premium rate numbers selectively or wholesale on a phone contract? Or unless a special pre dialled code is used to unlock access? Or is it just for land lines?
I don't know if the car history data service described there is valid or not. Presumably it does what it says and it may be something that you want to know and they don't misuse the data, but I don't know if it's a reasonable offer. For one thing, I'm a cyclist... Note that where it says "Try it now!", I assume that it's not free, that it costs you £3 "plus standard network rate" straight away. But to me it isn't obviously and exclusively bad.
I don't know how much of this is technically possible, but a filter app that checked the phone number against a list of dial prefixes before allowing it to be called would be good. Even better if it had an option to override a block with a PIN, so that should the phone's owner actually want to call a premium-rate number, it would still be easy to do so.
No doubt someone will point me at a bunch of apps that do just this.
Even better would be for telcos to allow us to associate our phones with a customised filter list, or even a few standard filter lists that took out all premium-rate calls, or all overseas calls (except for one or two designated countries), then we'd have recourse for any failure of the system. I'd also like to be able to put my phone number on a list where it cannot receive expensive chargeable text messages, because I would not knowingly sign up to receive these.
So rather than actually protecting the consumer they are resorting to posting health warning like stuff!
I know Cameron wanted them abolished but is this looks an even greasier solution.
Whilst Cameron might have looked like he was sticking 2 fingers up to the public, as Ofcom always seems to too, maybe he was right?
Got to quite agree.
I'd also enforce a landline number for all 0845 type service numbers, especially the new NHS and police ones!!!!!!
Its as if we are now part scammed by the police and NHS. I guess it is all pseudo privatisation.
It's not in the phone company's (and apparently - at least in the case of my iPhone - in the phone manufacturer's) interest to allow users to block receiving calls from known spammers, never mind block outgoing calls. How hard would it be for the phone's software to block all numbers starting with 0843410 for example (a fair few that I've allocated to my "SPAM" contact start with that). I think you can if you JailBreak - but I don't want to update / slow down my phone by JailBreaking to the latest iOS.
Even the government doesn't seem to want to do anything about unsolicited phone calls. I've unplugged my landline now and on the very rare occasion it's plugged in, I just get spam phone calls. The amount of spam calls I've been personally asked about (including one where I was present) from someone in India, claiming to be from "Windows" is remarkable - and it doesn't seem as though you can do anything about those either.
Some years ago, my girlfriend at the time was on PAYG and every time she added credit it disappeared within ten minutes. It turned out that she'd unknowingly signed up to one of those spam services who, when faced with lack of credit on her phone, waited until there was credit to nab the money.
I seem to remember that when the first premium rate number (0898) first came out, there was uproar from parents who were getting huge phone bills because their kids were dialling numbers from adverts specifically aimed at them. BT actually stopped premium rate numbers altogether for a while. They soon came back - and with a vengeance.
Until one phone manufacturer or mobile operator goes against the trend and allows their customers some level of control (and makes it a selling point), it'll just keep going the way it is unfortunately.
I've demo'd some great apps and then bought the full versions - all but one (£17.99 for LogMeIn) for well under a fiver and I haven't regretted any of my purchases (well, perhaps one!), but I particularly resent those companies that try to trick children into in-app purchases.
Since leaving my television (and licence) behind and going blu-ray and projector, I've developed a very low tolerance (even a hatred) for advertising, advertisers and their blatant lies. Sadly some sales people will do anything to get their commission and apparently have no morals at all, but I can't see that segment of society being curtailed, never mind eradicated in my lifetime. There's too much protection of "big" business at the expense of us "little" consumers. It's no wonder many of us don't trust the government to represent our interests.
Sorry - what was the question again?
;o)
A game aimed to appeal to children, which then leads to premium rate phone calls, should spend the next thousand years in court.
A child cannot enter into a contract and pressing the "bill me 'till I bleed" icon is a contractual matter, between the USER and the fleecing scum merchant.
The fact the device belongs to an adult is a mute point, the user making the contract is a child and therefore the contract is invalid.
If the game wishes to comply with the rules of contract, then any in game purchases should require a password which is obviously provided by an adult, thus meeting the requirements of a contract.
Personally, I'd have the "merchants" tried for child abuse, put in a suitably insecure prison wing and denied access to pain relieving lubricants, while Gobble inc. drones give the world a flypast peek at their suffering every hour.
Or is that a tad too much to expect from a judiciary that leans to the point of toppling towards the interests of commerce.
This is one reason to keep the odd old handset here and there. My 5yr old get to use my old Desire HD - running a custom ROM, minus a SIM and requiring my password for any purchases. Problem solved. If I'm honest I really don't want his grubby fingers all over my latest shiney gadget so my old one is just fine.
If they were permissions I could enable or disable them as I see fit. Instead my only choice is "do I install or not" which makes them requirements.
Actually, assuming you at least trust the developer to not be infecting your phone, install it, leave a scathing comment / review, then delete it immediately, but yea, default option should be to choose which requirements be allowed - also, if anyone discovers apps that use premium rate numbers mention it in the reviews.
Also, not aimed at McUser, if you like an app (esp on Android), pay for the bloody thing and voila, no adverts or dodgy 08 whatever numbers. The freemium model would pretty much die out and everybody would be happy... er.
Having a game obviously aimed at toddlers and young children is fine. Allowing the scum developers to include 'in-app' purchases of virtual goods such as Smurfberries *AT ALL* is a disgusting and cynical move.
Allowing those purchases to add up to serious money is criminal - but with the counter-intuitive consumer benefit that ridiculous bills simply will not be paid and must be refunded... My kid buys $10 worth of Smurfberries = my problem. My kid buys $1000 worth of Smurfberries - Apple's problem - zero it out Sunshine. And they will.
Apple and Google should be ashamed. They should be doubly ashamed that they had to add in parental controls after the fact. They failed to foresee these GUI settings until after the early unwitting had be ensnared.
With respect to the snide comments about "digital baby sitters", it's the soccer [football] moms and hockey dads running around all the time that are emitting far more CO2. Such activities ARE KILLING THE PLANET.
While the app makers and Apple are cynical and to blame, so are the parents. We have had all this crap around for long enough to know that there is a scam round each corner. parents need to be educating their kids about this, not handing over the high tech goodies to the youngsters
For sure, pursue the scoundruls that make this shite, but additionally, dont do the Media equivalent of leaving your child in the middle of a busy road on its own
Whilst it's great Ofcom and the OFT are finally looking into the disgrace that is children's apps - from the Smurfs to Playmobil Pirates - offering virtual items for £69.99 a pop, there's been a lack of publicity about other devious deeds in the mobile industry.
Even with all the press that went with the announcement of OFT investigation last week, I can't think of any other news outlet that covered clickable premium rate ads in children's games.
But, as bad as that is, simply having a mobile telephone number is enough for many a premium rate operator to help themselves to your phone credit, £4.50 p/w at a time. Then, when they're questioned about this they'll claim it was probably your kid who clicked on an ad in such an app you foolishly let them use when you were busy.
Google 'unsolicited reverse rate SMS' for some examples. I'll mention no names this time.
I'm fairly sure (although I've never actually used it) that my carrier offers configurable call filters for outgoing calls. Configurable either from the phone (with a service PIN) or from their customer service portal (with PIN and PW). So I can, with some degree of granularity, allow or disallow outbound international/premium-rate/etc. calls.
When my kids are old enough to get devices which are not my SIMM-less replaced ones, said devices will be locked down until said kids are paying for them out of their own pockets.
I've always assumed this was pretty standard practice world wide; do UK carriers not offer this kind of service? If not, is there a market opportunity?
"Anyone who claims one should be watching the children every minute to prevent such activity clearly has never had one, and many parents feel children should be free to explore the digital world without constant supervision."
Why is it always someone elses fault and never the parent? Bloody good example to set your "Oh, i'm pregnant"!
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