Steve Smith, host of your TQA Weekly, explains how-to prevent unauthorized in-app purchases on your iOS device using the restrictions feature in iOS.
Episode #2-40 released on July 1, 2012
How do you deal with in-game purchases done on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and your family or friends? You have rules, limits, or a credit card attached to your iTunes account? Do you have problems with kids and their ruthless spending habits on your iOS device? I have a solution for all this, and more.
Now, I do not normally make videos specific to iOS, and I have only done one other video dedicated to the topic. The reason is there is a lot of videos on applications that have many useful purposes. The forgotten items are usually the device's pre-installed features, some of which aren't public, or not as popular. To this effect, I am making a video on a feature known as Restrictions. Not popular, not really used, and very effective at its task.
Now, the restrictions feature is actually buried in the iOS device, so in order to use it, you need to navigate to the Settings Application, then go to General, then scroll down to Restrictions. Its part of the Auto-Lock and Passcode Lock cluster. You will have to enable Restrictions and use a different pin or password to protect it, so no one actually modifies it. Then you can Disallow any items you want by turning them off in Allow. Head down the page to Allowed Content, and turn off In-App Purchases, and set up the required password just below to your choosing. This is the same cluster of settings for TV Shows, Movies, Music, Podcasts, etc.. where you can modify the Ratings location and Rating Restrictions. Exit, from there, and load any game you want, and try to buy something now. The purchase won't go through no matter how much anyone wants it, and even if the correct password to iTunes is used. It will just hang, fail or deny, just waiting for the permission to do the transaction. In the case of a few people, this gives you them time to know they are trying to purchase something with your device, then you can decide on the consequence.
On a different note, may I suggest that the most effective way to block any purchases are never leave a credit card connected to the account, you can clear the credit card from your iTunes account by logging into iTunes and selecting none as your default card, or change your password frequently.
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Next week, I'll be dabbling in Last Pass, and Password management tricks and solutions. I'll explain the best way to manage your passwords, and how to make Last Pass really secure, so until next week.
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Host : Steve Smith | Music : Jonny Lee Hart | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Productions