Toddler goes on £1,700 in-app iPad spending spree

A SHORT-TROUSERED APPLE FAN has run up a bill of £1,700 by playing iPad games for just a few minutes.

iPad games, it seems, have some appeal to the youth of today, and today's youth - given in reports over the weekend as five year old Danny Kitchen, really wanted a go with one on Sunday.

BBC News reports that Mrs Kitchen, from Bristol, said that there were a lot of distracting things going on when young Danny asked Mr Kitchen for the iPad passcode so that he might enjoy a "free download". Mr Kitchen apparently thought, "Why not?" and put in the code.

Danny Kitchen then downloaded the free app, which was a game of some sort. Then, during what we understand to be around 15 minutes of play, he made a number of in-app purchases for add-ons - £1,700 worth.

As Danny only played the game for 15 minutes, we cannot begin to imagine how much of a cash sucking moneypit it must be. We would advise, as Apple does, that parental iPad users lock down things like in-app payment settings through their control options.

Information on those can be found through iTunes. The advice starts with, "Don't share your passcode."

For Mrs Kitchen the importance of this hit home on Monday morning when a number of emails from iTunes billing appeared in her in-box.

"It all looked like it was the same thing, I presumed it was a mistake," she said. "It was only when the credit card company called to say were these 19 transactions normal? I said 'No, it's not'."

When would it ever be 'normal' or right to let people spend over £1,500 on in-app frippery? Never. That's what we say.

Apple has taken on the hero role here and made sure that young Mr Kitchen's pocket money does not go the way of the money trap iTunes app developers for the next 20 years. It has already refunded the money to the family. µ