How To Add a Password to new Android App Purchases
If you have your credit card linked with the Google Play Store, it would be wise to password protect app purchases to prevent any rogue purchases on your mobile phone.
If you have your credit card linked with the Google Play Store, it would be wise to password protect app purchases as there is no way to disable them like you can on the iOS Platform. This is especially true if your phone is used all the time children. If that’s the case, you can also filter apps that are not suitable for young children. Here’s a guide to help you filter your apps and password protect new purchases so no one can make any purchases using your credit card.
Open Google Play store, tap on the menu button and tap on Settings.
Under User Controls section, tab on Content Filtering.
It will show you the app ratings. Select according to your needs and tap OK.
Content filtering will not prevent anyone from buying apps so it’s better to password protect your purchases. To set the security pin for new app purchases from the Play store, tap on Set or Change Pin option.
Select your pin and it will ask you to confirm it. Click Ok when done.
Now, come back to the User Controls section and check Use Pin for Purchases option.
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Gregg L. DesElms
Are there actually any stories about unauthorized purchases which actually makes this necessary?
I ask because if there are, then that, alone, is a far, far bigger story which needs to be written by someone and put on the front page of this and every site on the Internet with a large, red, flashing headline.
My point is that if one’s Google Play Store account, and Google Wallet account, are such that a PIN is necessary just for the authorized user/owner of said accounts to make a purchase…
…then there’s an inherent security breach in the Google system which needs to be exposed right on the front page of every major publication on the planet.
If it’s NOT actually a problem, then I’m not sure it’s responsible to suggest in an article, like this, that “it would be wise to password protect app purchases.”
Even more irresponsible, though, it seems to me, is the implicit suggestion that simply because the Apple App Store has a certain approach to its security (in this case, apparently, disabling the ability to make ANY purchases… at all… which is a ridiculous way to approach it), all other apps stores should follow suit; or, worse, that other app stores — and, obviously, in this case, we’re talking about Apple’s nemesis Google Play Store — is somehow deficient because it doesn’t implement the same wrongheaded approach.
Mr. Saleem’s heart is apparently in the iOS camp, and so shouldn’t, as far as I’m concerned, be reporting on Android-related issues since it’s clear that he can’t do it without inflicting a little editorial comment right in his very way of writing about it.
Turning off one’s entire ability to make purchases, and then having to turn it all back on again, just to stop unauthorized purchases, is just about the dumbest security approach I can imagine; and leave it to Apple and its right-brained form-over-function developers to come-up with such ridiculousness.
The Google Play Store’s PIN approach makes much more sense, and is clearly the result of a left-brainer and truly proper security-related thinking.
Notwithstanding that neither Apple’s “turn it all off unless it’s needed” or Google’s PIN methods shouldn’t really be necessary at all; and if they are, then there’s a far larger security problem inherent in both systems which must be addressed…
…it’s nevertheless wrong for a writer, here, to take a back-handed swipe at the way Google does things as he describes how to utilize it, simply because he’s more of an iPhone/iPad kinda’ guy.
As an Android user who thinks that iOS users think wrongheadedly about how all this computer stuff works, just generally, I, for one, would like not to have to endure the bias in the articles I read, here.
___________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Bram
Just came across this PIN tutorial, and it comes in handy! Why? Well, I was looking for a solution like this, to prevent my 2 daughters (5 and 7 years old) bying random stuff on my Android tablet.
A few months ago, one of them bought for almost 40$ worth of virtual fish from a company names Gamevil USA (but it based in Korea..). She was playing a free pengium game, and in one of the many scoring pages, she clicked on ‘buy fishes’, and my credit card was automatically charged. Without anyone even authorizing or anything: a 5 year old girl could charge my VISA!
I even had the Google Play store blocked by a third party app, but this didn’t work for ‘in app’ purchases..
As much as I love Android, the way Apple is doing this (after being forced to by a class action law suit) now is much more secure.
Result: I hardly ever buy something in the Google Play store now, and if you have to, I go to my Google profile (on a desktop, you can’t do that on a tablet.. duh..) and remove my credit card again..
If Google’s motto is ‘don’t be evil’, they’re not doing a very good job living up to it..
Bram
Belgium
Hammy
Your thinking too much. The PIN is simply to make playstore “children-proof.” It’s as simple as that and that’s just what I, and the others here, needs.
Daniel
My young son just purchased a Angry Birds Space mega bundle for 20$ while playing.
I usually put the tablet in Airplane mode when he plays with it but forgot this time.
In such situation, the PIN protection is a must! Thanks for the tip!
Dave
This is a MUST! To answer Greg’s question about unauthorized purchases, this happend to me. My last phone bill had a $2.99 charge on it from a Gmail account I’d never heard of. And THEY USED MY NAME! I got the amount refunded from Sprint, but the damage has been done. I also reported the email to Google Play. There was no record of me purchasing the app.
Pauline
I set the pincode in google play but it doesn’t work because the kids can still download all the apps without it. Please help?