FTC sues Amazon for allowing children make purchase on Amazon Store

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of United States announced that it has filed a lawsuit against the online store Amazon for allowing minors making purchase without parental permission.

In a statement, the U.S. agency said that Amazon allowed children to purchases through downloaded applications on mobile devices like Kindle Fire tablets without parental consent, and then the cost of these purchases is carried to the parents’ account. According to the FTC, children across the United States have spent millions of dollars on purchases at Amazon without parental permission.

“Amazon must have recognized what the serious problems their processes have created, and now we are trying to accomplish refunds for affected parents and according to the court order, Amazon needs to require parental consent for shopping ‘explained FTC president, Edith Ramirez.

According t o FTC, Amazon employees have raised the concern about in-app purchase  in 2011 that charges for UNLIMITED without any password, and they did not implement anything so far which would prevent children acting as the owner. In addition, according to the FTC, the company based in Seattle (Washington) did not respond quickly and diligently to complaints from users who were affected by this situation. So it took longer to come into light. They also said that one purchase in the app can cost as much as $99.99.

The software giant Apple has also gone through this and accepted to make changes in their app store to meet the requirements of the FTC and to undertake to compensate $32.5 million to parents whose children had shopped “online” without their permission.