Parents who regularly hand their iDevices over to their children, take note: you can still be burned by kids making in-app purchases. The BBC published a story on Friday highlighting a five-year-old's impressive feat in running up a £1,700 iTunes bill—about $2,500—after his father entered a passcode to allow him to download a "free" game from the App Store. The details of the situation reveal a series of unfortunate events that led to the truly epic tab, though Apple has since refunded the money.

There are a few things the Kitchens could have done better when their son, Danny, began using an iPad to play games. The article doesn't specify whether Danny's father entered a passcode for the device, for the App Store, or within the app itself, but the last scenario listed seems most likely. Entering a password to download apps in the App Store used to mean the user could begin charging in-app purchases without re-entering that password for 15 minutes as the default iOS behavior.

Apple made that more difficult with iOS 4.3 in early 2011 by requiring the App Store password a second time when in-app purchases are made. Assuming the family's iPad was running a more recent version of iOS, it sounds like Danny's father entered his password when Danny began to make purchases, not realizing what he was authorizing.

Danny apparently began buying stuff right away, and the Kitchens were even notified by e-mail of charges being made to their account: "The next day the Kitchens received e-mails which itemized successive £69.99 purchases, but they were believed to be sent in error and dismissed," wrote the BBC. The total charges of £1,700 were only brought to the family's attention thanks to a call from the credit card company.

The Federal Trade Commission said in 2011 that it would look into Apple's marketing of in-app purchases to children. Apple recently settled a class-action lawsuit over kids running up in-app purchase tabs, an issue that caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission.

Apple also provides a way to prevent in-app purchases altogether in its parental controls (found within Settings > General > Restrictions), though many parents are still unaware of these controls or how to use them:

The parental controls also allow users to set a time limit for how long you can make purchases until having to enter the password again: the default is 15 minutes, but you can also set it to "immediately" if you want iOS to ask you every time. Setting up such controls—and understanding what your child is asking for when he or she wants a password entered—can help cut down on these incidents. After all, you can't always count on Apple to issue a refund, especially if you're the one who's entering the password.