A six year old kid named George, son of Jessica Johnson of Wilton, CT, purchased in-app features for the iPad version of Sega’s Sonic Forces. His mother found a series of withdrawals made by her credit card that totalled to around $16,293. The withdrawals took place at the time starting from July when her 6 year old son George starting playing games on her iPad and kept buying add-ons in the game.
Initially, Jessica presumed the transactions to be either a fraud or a mistake and she filed a fraud claim. She was informed that the transactions were indeed genuine and was asked to contact Apple. She did so and found that it was her son who was the culprit. Apple refused to refund the amount as she did not claim it within 60 days of the charge. Jessica admitted that she did not take necessary precautions to completely lock down the account as she did not know about all the features. She accused the game of encouraging young users to spend money. Apple has been offering a number of Parent Control options to manage the iPhone or iPad when children use them and includes limiting purchases and accessing the apps but Jessica did not check them out.
