Afraid that children will plunder the credit card from your smartphone? This is how you prevent it

Family Link allows you, as a parent, to place restrictions on your children’s accounts. Since 2015, it has also been possible to create family groups for Google Play. These are groups of up to 12 people who live in the same country and can, for example, make purchases using the same credit card.

As the manager of such a family group, you have control over who can pay what with this shared payment method. Parents who aren’t admins can only manage the purchasing behavior of people you have a Family Link with.

Open the family group, and click on the name of the family member you want to manage payments from. Choose “Purchase Approvals.” Here you can indicate for which purchases Google must first ask you for permission: all content, only paid content or only in-app purchases. Google will then ask you for your password when your child tries to use the family payment method.

However, if you are logged in to your own device with your own payment method and your child uses it, the family group will not be of much use to you. Google Play has another solution for that: verification.

Verification can be found in the Google Play settings, under ‘Authentication’ and then ‘Require verification for purchases’. You can ask Google here to always ask you for your password. You can also apply verification for 30 minutes at a time. You then only have to let Google know that it’s you again half an hour after the last time you entered your password.

Finally, Google itself has already built in security. If an app is intended for children aged 12 or younger, it will always ask for a password when someone makes a purchase.

Apple also lets you set different permissions if your kids have their own devices. You’ll need to create a group for Family Sharing.

Under Family Sharing settings, as a family head, you’ll find the “Ask to Buy” heading. For each family member you can indicate here whether you want iOS to ask you for permission when they buy something.

Only when you give that permission will the purchase actually be made and the app will be downloaded to your child’s device. This option is automatically enabled for children under the age of 13.

If it concerns your own device, you will have to turn on authentication. You’ll find this option under “Media & Purchases” in the Settings screen. Under ‘Password settings’ you can indicate that you want the App Store to always ask you for your password. You can also ask iOS to approve your purchases for fifteen minutes, and then ask for your password again.

Finally, you can also simply turn off purchases. This works via Screen Time, an option that you can turn on via the settings menu.

Click “Use Screen Time Passcode” to create a code so your child can’t sneakily turn purchases back on. You will then find the option to turn off in-app purchases via ‘Restrictions’ and ‘iTunes and App Store’. You will also find an option under ‘Restrictions’ to completely disable apps like iTunes.