Family Share For iOS 8: iTunes Sharing & Kid Purchase Permission

Kids accidentally racking up hundreds of dollars of iTunes and App Store purchases may be a thing of the past with iOS 8, with Apple adding Family Share to better interlink accounts of parents and children. Family Share for iOS 8 allows a group of people set as a family to share their apps and media bought from the App Store and iTunes across all of their devices, while the security to prevent unauthorized purchases has been boosted, too.

So, everyone who is signed into the same Family Share account can buy apps and content billed the same registered credit card. However, since that might be a gateway to purchase pain from kids going wild with music, games, and in-app purchases, there's a system to keep the parent in the loop.

If a flagged user tries to buy something, a pop-up notification arrives on the device of the person to whom the credit card is registered.

They need to give permission for the purchase to go ahead before it will be allowed on the other device.

Companies like Apple and Google have been under close attention over the past twelve to eighteen months, around the protections they factor in to prevent children from racking up huge charges without their parents knowing.

Back in January, Apple came to an agreement with the FTC settling complaints about how easy in-app purchases were to make. The company also agreed to pay $32.5m in refunds to customers affected.

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