In the US alone, there are 100 million people playing games on mobile phones and 53 percent of gamers play once a day on their Smartphone. It’s big business with 34 per cent of the top 100 grossing apps using the freemium model.

There are loads of game and app developers who offer free games with in-game advertising to help cover their costs, but more recently games are designed to include free versions with in-app purchases. This is in fact a mechanism for selling some extra features of their games/applications. In-app purchases can be of three types: consumables, non-consumables and also subscriptions.

Parents beware

What you need to know if you have kids is that if you don’t disable in-app purchases, you could find yourself with a huge bill on your credit/debit card. This kind of experience is happening all the time.

Here is a scenario for you.

You’ve yet to disable in-app purchases. Little Johnny loves this new game that you downloaded for him to learn all about animals and the alphabet.  You’re making dinner after a long day and you know you can guarantee 30 minutes of peace if you leave Johnny to his own devices and let him play the game.

Johnny plays into the game and reaches the second level where he needs to move to open the gate to get to all the animals beginning with the letter G. The mechanism to get there is to buy a key to let you in. Johnny is asked if he wants to purchase the key. Of course he does and $47.00 means nothing to a 3 year old.

3 weeks later and boom you have a massive bill.

Here’s how you disable in-app purchases from iPad/iPhone/iPod

Turn on restrictions

Choose General > Restrictions, then tap Enable Restrictions.
Enter you four-digit passcode.
Re-enter the passcode.

Restrict purchases within applications

Turn In-App Purchases off. When enabled, this feature allows you to purchase additional content or features within applications downloaded from the App Store.