Yesterday’s update to the iOS 4.3 includes a requirement that buyers must enter their passwords for each purchase in iTunes.
The move comes after parents and legislators squawked that kids were making too many accidental buys in “credit-card bait games” in part because passwords stayed active for a 15-minute grace period.
“We are proud to have industry-leading parental controls with iOS,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told the Washington Post. “With iOS 4.3, in addition to a password being required to purchase an app on the App Store, a reentry of your password is now required when making an in-app purchase.”
What do you think about the new requirement?
And do you think it will stop these games targeting kids?
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco freelance writer who heads up Cult of Mac Magazine, our weekly publication available on iTunes. You can find her on Twitter and Google+. If you’re doing something new, cool and Apple-related, email her.
28 responses to “Responding to parents, Apple now requires passwords for all in-app buys”
Seems like a good thing to me.
Better for everyone’s wallet. Might put an end to many freemium games tho.
Next mission, skip the need to enter password for updates.
I still say they need a simple setting: “Require password for purchases above this price,” with the user able to set the price. If that allowed me to update free apps without a password, while requiring the password for anything that will take money, that would be the best of both worlds. Still, this was a necessary move and I’m glad they made it.
There should be a preference possibility to opt out of this. This can become very annoying in the long run.
I think that this won’t do anything, because they have no clue how to update the firmware. I have loads of friends that are still on iOS 3, because they either don’t know how to update the firmware, or that they just dont care. Shame, really. Also, I hate seeing all those junk apps in the free column, thats all there because people are desperate for free stuff, when they could just do a little reading on the internet, and find that you can get it all for free on Installous and AppTrackr.
It should go in parental controls or something. It pisses me off that Apple has submitted to the pure stupidity of irresponsible parents
Please tell me they have the option NOT to require a password every time. No reason to punish us all, right? Personally, I welcome the requirement to re-enter for every purchase. I’ve been running with in-app purchases disabled because I’m the bad uncle who’s too lazy to look over the shoulder of the 6 yo while he plays a newly downloaded game.
Glad to see this- any freemium game that is relying on inadvertent purchases is doing the platform a disservice- entering a password each time is a minor imposition- who goes making a string of in-app-purchases on a regular basis anyway? Next thing to solve is the platform asking you to confirm your purchase when you re-download in-app content you’ve already bought- it should be checking that you own the content and telling you that, rather than asking you to confirm the purchase and showing a price first, which any reasonable person would interpret as being charged (or at least potentially being charged) again for the content.
This is absolutely true. It took 2 months for my sister to get comfortable enough with the iphone to not get rid of it.
Considering not everyone runs iOS 4 that would be using this, and some can’t run iOS 4.3, probably not.
Probably not. Although apparently it only works if you are doing an in app purchase. not a regular one.
They already had it in parental controls and parents weren’t using it and weren’t watching their kids. And then blamed Apple when Junior was buying stuff (my fav is still the woman that had told her kids the password to the account)
Or you can do what we do with our 8YO…there is no credit card attached to his account. He only gets money added through gift cards that he buys, or is given. That way he knows exactly how much money he can spend in his iPod Touch.
In fact, he told me the other night that is only downloading free apps (than I looked at his account balance and it was $1.12!). It is also teaching him the value of money and making choices on games that he wants to play.