Yes this is correct, Apple family sharing has dark side which is not so obvious at first look, but it is more dark then we would expect from Apple.
If you read about family purchase at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201079, the sentence “Any time a family member makes a new purchase, it's billed directly to the family organizer's account.” Does not ring any bell, but it does to me after discovery I made last week.
My 12 years old son gained access to my credit card through family sharing and spent more then 1100 Euros through in app purchases.
Not possible?
Unfortunately not so difficult especially with IT capabilities our kids has today at age, where they have 0 financial responsibilities, nor ability to connect imaginary world from computers with real money at fathers bank account. And I am afraid that in app purchases are built specifically to target weak groups of teenagers and I have no doubt it is huge business. So I don’t expect to change anything by writing this, however I do believe that all of us deserves to know how weak is security at Apple regarding protecting your money.
So how this all happened?
My son managed to change his birthdate to make him adult, by this simple step he gained instant and unlimited access to my credit card from family sharing and spent more then 1100 Euros in less then two month through in app purchases. In app purchases could be extremely costly and I am not sure if there are any limits, but don’t think so as my son was able to spent lots of money per day in the same app. I tried to claim back what was spent with no success (of course even if money were spent by kid)
I also tried to contact Apple regarding security issue I found, but they did not care at all, probably because they already know. And one thing is clear, family organizer always pay for bills of his family so from business point of view, good group to target. In this case business seems to be more important than security.
Jan
If you read about family purchase at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201079, the sentence “Any time a family member makes a new purchase, it's billed directly to the family organizer's account.” Does not ring any bell, but it does to me after discovery I made last week.
My 12 years old son gained access to my credit card through family sharing and spent more then 1100 Euros through in app purchases.
Not possible?
Unfortunately not so difficult especially with IT capabilities our kids has today at age, where they have 0 financial responsibilities, nor ability to connect imaginary world from computers with real money at fathers bank account. And I am afraid that in app purchases are built specifically to target weak groups of teenagers and I have no doubt it is huge business. So I don’t expect to change anything by writing this, however I do believe that all of us deserves to know how weak is security at Apple regarding protecting your money.
So how this all happened?
My son managed to change his birthdate to make him adult, by this simple step he gained instant and unlimited access to my credit card from family sharing and spent more then 1100 Euros in less then two month through in app purchases. In app purchases could be extremely costly and I am not sure if there are any limits, but don’t think so as my son was able to spent lots of money per day in the same app. I tried to claim back what was spent with no success (of course even if money were spent by kid)
I also tried to contact Apple regarding security issue I found, but they did not care at all, probably because they already know. And one thing is clear, family organizer always pay for bills of his family so from business point of view, good group to target. In this case business seems to be more important than security.
Jan