A tweak delivered via the iOS 4.3 update is designed to prevent kids from inadvertently racking up huge in-app purchase bills to their parents' iTunes accounts. iOS 4.3 now has a separate 15-minute time window for making in-app purchases after a new app has been downloaded, requiring a user to enter a password before any new in-app purchases can be made. The move comes just a month after complaints from irate parents inspired US Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) to request the FTC investigate the matter.

Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller confirmed the change in a statement to The Washington Post. "We are proud to have industry-leading parental controls with iOS," Muller told the Post. "With iOS 4.3, in addition to a password being required to purchase an app on the App Store, a reentry of your password is now required when making an in-app purchase."

In previous versions of iOS, entering your iTunes password to make a purchase started a 15-minute timer. This would allow you to make multiple purchases without having to reenter your password each time, but would reasonably prevent someone else from using your iTunes account to make expensive purchases without your knowledge—especially if your iDevice was stolen.

The problem with this model was made apparent with the popularity of some games ostensibly geared toward kids, such as Smurfs' Village or Tap Fish, which rely on in-app purchases of in-game virtual currency to do many tasks. For instance, players in Smurfs' Village can buy bundles of "smurfberries"—a whole wagon full runs $99.99—to trade for plants to farm or materials to build a Smurf hut. Tap Fish players can buy "fish bucks" to buy new exotic fish, food, or other virtual aquarium accoutrements.

The games are free to download, but many parents were unaware that they relied on in-app purchases for continued play. Once a parent entered an iTunes password to download the app and handed an iPod touch to their child to play, she would have 15 minutes to buy "smurfberries" or "fish bucks" with reckless abandon. After getting bills totaling several hundred—or in some cases—thousands of dollars, angry parents that complained loudly enough to iTunes customer service got the charges reversed. Most felt that such games unfairly counted on both parents' and children's naïveté to rake in tons of real cash for "free" games. "My daughter racked up $500 pretty quickly without realizing she was spending real money," one irritated parent told Ars.

"I am disturbed by news that in-app purchases may be taking advantage of children’s lack of understanding when it comes to money and what it means to ‘buy’ an imaginary game piece on the Web. Companies shouldn’t be able to use Smurfs and snowflakes and zoos as online ATMs pulling money from the pockets of unsuspecting parents," Rep. Markey said in a statement last month.

Though parents could previously turn off in-app purchasing altogether to prevent the problem, it also prevented in-app purchases for everyone that used the device. The new tweak in iOS 4.3 adds a new 15 minute timer for in-app purchases, separate from the password request to purchase apps. Now when an app is downloaded, an iTunes password would have to be entered before any in-app purchases could be made. The change adds an extra layer of safety, requiring at least one parent intervention before in-app purchases could be made. (After that, of course, all bets are off.)

Listing image by Anthony Kelly