GrubHub has no barriers to quick purchases
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Handing an unlocked iPhone to a young child can give you some peace of mind, but it can also cost you $1,000 worth of GrubHub if you don’t have the right parental controls in place. Here’s how to prevent this from happening to you.
These days, it’s not unusual to give a young child a mobile phone and keep them immersed in games and videos. However, parents often forget about the various sensitive apps available on their devices that can cost a lot of money.
As your child grows older, they may begin to learn how to remember passcodes and switch and explore apps. One family learned this lesson the hard way in a small town in Michigan.
According to a report from click on detroita Macomb County kid managed to order a $1,000 GrubHub while playing with his father’s phone. I’m here.
Right after I put my son to bed, GrubHub orders started showing up on my doorstep. The bank was able to prevent the $439 pizza order, but most of the other orders made it to the family’s doorstep.
This kind of story is a great example of reminding parents that smartphones can do more than distract children with games. Here are some steps parents can take to ensure that unlocked devices are safely handed to their children.
- Make sure Face ID or Touch ID is set up and your child doesn’t know the passcode.
- Make sure all banking, food, delivery, shopping, or other financial apps are locked with FaceID or a password.
- Set Screen Time restrictions to prevent certain apps from working and lock those settings with a different passcode.
- Use Guided Access to lock your iPhone into one app and control what features are available.
These features are listed from the least extreme to the most extreme, and parents should decide what works best for their child. and never give the passcode to a child.
Most restrictions can be bypassed if your child knows the phone passcode. Especially if that app is Face ID locked or if the purchase was made with her Apple Pay. If Face ID fails, the user is prompted to enter the passcode instead.
Enabling Guided Access locks the device to one app
The kid in this story was 6 years old, so he (probably) didn’t know what he was doing at the time. He probably believed he was playing on GrubHub and he didn’t realize it cost real money.
The GrubHub app is set to work with Apple Pay by default. But again, knowing the passcode won’t stop your child from completing checkout.
