Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#191

Post by andygcook » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

This type of predatory behavior has been happening for a long time. When I was about 9 years old, my brother and I bought Link's Awakening on Gameboy. On the back of the booklet that comes with the game was a line that read, "Need Help? Call this number" with an 900 phone number listed.

We had access to the home phone and wanted to beat the game. So of course, we called the number a few times to get hints on how to beat hards parts of the game. This was before the internet where you could just lookup a walkthrough online.

You can imagine my mother's shock when she received a $200+ charge on her phone bill for a phone number she had never heard of. Apparently the cost of the call was about $5/minute.

We got yelled at and we weren't allowed to call the number anymore after that. I'm proud to say we still beat the game though.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#192

Post by aacook » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

andygcook wrote: post #191

This type of predatory behavior has been happening for a long time. When I was about 9 years old, my brother and I bought Link's Awakening on Gameboy. On the back of the booklet that comes with the game was a line that read, "Need Help? Call this number" with an 900 phone number listed. We had access to the home phone and wanted to beat the game. So of course, we called the number a few times to get hints on how to b…

I still feel guilty about it every time we recount this story. I remember exactly where I was (on the top bunk) when mom shared the bill with me. I think she had me dial into the number to show her how it worked. To their credit, Nintendo did disclose there was a cost to the service but as I'm sure kids ignore notifications these days, I blindly pressed 7 or whatever because I wanted to get through the next level so badly. It didn't seem like real money. I can't remember if mom made me do excess chores to pay off the debt but I'm guessing she did. I should pay her back the $200 with interest.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#193

Post by sofunny » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #75

yholio wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole idea of storing a payment token that a company can charge at will (as opposed to a fixed top-up with cash) and then for me to be unable to deny those charges, I find it all unacceptable and refuse to allow it ever. After providing such a payment token there should be no proof and dispute involved, just a single click in a web interface "I refuse to pay for that and I revoke the token". The user of the toke…

Single use cards like privacy.com provides might be the solution you’re looking for

With all these good recommendations on this thread, I have decided to create a privacy.com account for my family. I have given privacy.com our address, my cell phone number, my email, and our bank information (they require the actual username and the password). All very vanilla, US, SF Bay Area, never had any problems with any other financial websites.

Not enough! My account activation is incomplete until I link my privacy.com account to my Facebook account!!! I thought this is so funny in the context of this privacy/Facebook spying thread.

Quote from my privacy.com account page: "Sometimes, the information provided at signup isn’t enough to verify someone’s identity, and activate their Privacy account. Connecting your Facebook account is a quick and easy way to provide extra identity verification. Okay"

P.S. I am now feeling uneasy about the whole thing. I have changed my bank login password and I am trying to cancel/delete the privacy.com account -- but there is no such option in the website menus.