Parental Responsibility

A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece where I threw out my opinions on the “freemium” game model for developers. I then had a Google+ Hangout with the other people involved with FTI, went to bed, woke up, had coffee, and read the news shooting around the blogosphere. Low and behold there’s a new story about someone racking up a giant bill on the very “freemium” games I was praising in that article. Check it out here. This is getting ridiculous, something needs to be done about it…and a lot of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the parents. I’m not 100% familiar with the in-app-purchase system over on iTunes, but I know on Google’s Android system I have a lot of control over how much – or how little – security is required before my credit card it charged. This security is all part of the way Google handles the in-app purchases. Every purchase you make has to go through the Play Store, where it is checked out through Google Wallet. This gives me the same control over in-app purchases that I have over purchasing any other item with Google Wallet  – I can’t imagine the iTunes store integration being any different in that respect.

In most of these stories I read about the parents running to the virtual store demanding a refund. They didn’t mean to spend thousands of dollars. They didn’t know that their kid had access to their credit cards through these app marketplaces. They didn’t understand how these new-fangled marketplaces worked. Feel bad for them, give them their money back, and get the card companies to charge-back the funds for the poor parent who just didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.

Boo. Hoo. Call me an asshole, but I really have no sympathy for the parents. None at all.

All throughout my life adults have been telling me the importance of knowing the consequence of my actions. I was supposed to understand what I was doing, before I did it. Not afterwards. They always spoke about this thing called “personal responsibility”. Know what else? “I didn’t know” was NEVER a good excuse…not once the entire time I was growing up do I remember saying “I didn’t know” and getting off the hook for whatever I did. Not. One. Time.

I know the world of technology is new to a lot of people. I understand that, and I sympathize to that. I also know that there is a plethora of resources designed, not only to help people understand how a lot of the new technology works, but also to help people excel at using it properly, and safely. To parents I give the following advice: seek out this material, use it, learn from it, and understand what you’re doing BEFORE you do it. Take some personal responsibility for yourself because that’s really the only way to protect yourself in ANY circumstance. In the case of the article I linked above the parent is trying to use the fraud protection on his credit card to get reimbursed. Fraud is when someone illicitly gains access to your credit card and uses it without your permission, not for when I hand you hand your credit card to someone and walk away. Guess which scenario we’re talking about here…I’ll give you a hint: it’s not fraud.

I’ll cut off my rant here, but what do you think. Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know either way, I like to know what other people think. Tweet at me @CallChrisNow. E-mail me at chris@chriscall.me. Comment here. Reach out to me and let me know what you think, it’s one of the great things about the internet, let your voice be heard.