EU: Apple and Google might have to limit in App purchases

The software and Smartphone giants Apple and Google on Friday were told to limit in-App purchasing from their app stores by the EU. This bold move comes as a precaution to prevent children from making in-app transactions when playing online games.

This move can be understood as recently Amazon.com and Apple were sued by the Federal trade Commission as it was believed that they have racked up millions of dollars in unauthorized purchases through it’s app store. Same goes for Apple. Although these two companies have suffered the wrath of regulatory bodies, tech giant Google seems to be untouched, at least for now.

However all these companies offer parental control over the purchasing of apps at the moment, like Apple users are asked to enter the password when they download an app, same option is provided by Google. But it is not proving to be the solution that is required to stop all the unauthorized purchases all over the world right now. With the Apple’s iOS 8 coming up, they have promised to provide better parental control facilities to the parents to be extra cautions and prevent in-app purchases.

The other reason that this is important is because the children should be stopped from making in-app transactions which might lead to fraud and forgery. Due to this recent step Google has removed the term free from Google play for the games that require in-app transactions. Users are not aware before-hand that they might have to pay for the game after playing a few levels of it. They see the term free and download it. This is the reason Apple’s billing practices were criticized and they had to refund $32.5 million to the parents whose children made the in-app transactions without their knowledge.