Many risks when children use mobile devices

In general consumer protection, children are considered the most vulnerable/most vulnerable to rights violations. In the field of mobile applications, children's awareness of risks during use is clearly not as high as that of adults. Moreover, children are also more easily attracted to games than adults, especially in the context of applications being increasingly developed with items/content attractive to children. This has happened not only in Vietnam but also in developed countries, including the United States, over the past many years.

In early April 2017, the US Federal Trade Commission (US.FTC) initiated a case involving children making in-app purchases at Amazon. The court ruled that Amazon must prepare a compensation amount of up to 70 million USD for consumers. The previous developments of the case stemmed from being charged for in-app purchases even though the account owner did not make the transaction. These transactions were successfully made by children without confirmation from adults.

The applications involved in the case are mainly online games that allow the purchase of in-game items such as: character items, character upgrades, ownership areas, in-game resources, game sequels, or even fees to skip a difficult part of the game... Virtual money in the game is purchased with the user's credit card information - a very quick form of payment because the card information is already saved in the account. Normally, when there is a purchase request from the player, the applications will request confirmation information such as password or fingerprint. However, Amazon allowed players to make purchases without confirmation from the account owner - only when receiving a credit card statement from the bank, the user will know about the expenses. The case took place over a period of 5 years: from November 2011 to May 2016 with huge damage to consumers.

The court's judgment on this case is considered satisfactory and protects the legitimate rights of consumers. However, from the consumer's perspective, it is more beneficial to proactively protect one's rights than to let damage happen and be compensated. A similar case involving Amazon was thoroughly handled by the US.FTC with Apple and Google - the world's leading application providers. Accordingly, these two companies compensated affected consumers and allowed consumers to claim refunds directly on their mobile devices when detecting in-app transactions. These three cases demonstrate that a large number of consumers around the world have been affected by in-app purchases.