Apple has settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over in-app purchase disclosures, a new email from Apple CEO Tim Cook reveals. The email, posted by 9to5Mac, finds Cook explaining at length steps Apple has taken to make in-app purchases safer for customers with younger children.
Cook also took issue with the FTC’s involvement. He wrote, “It doesn’t feel right for the FTC to sue over a case that had already been settled. To us, it smacked of double jeopardy.
However, the consent decree the FTC proposed does not require us to do anything we weren’t already going to do, so we decided to accept it rather than take on a long and distracting legal fight.” The report notes the U.S. government will announce the settlement later today.
Update: The FTC announced Apple will refund at least $32.5 million in full consumer refunds to settle the FTC’s complaint “that the company billed consumers for millions of dollars of charges incurred by children in kids’ mobile apps without their parents’ consent.” According to the FTC, “The settlement requires Apple to modify its billing practices to ensure that Apple obtains consumers’ express, informed consent prior to billing them for in-app charges, and that if the company gets consumers’ consent for future charges, consumers must have the option to withdraw their consent at any time.
