Does ask to buy notify when switched off?

Question

Level 1

6 points

Does ask to buy notify when switched off?

Shortly after my daughter got her iPad I received an email notification that to tell me that my wife had set Ask To Buy up on her account I had been added to authorise purchases. However, recently we have been stung with a big bill for in app purchases which neither my wife or I knew, or had been notified about. When we checked her account we found that not only had Ask to Buy been disabled, so had all explicit content protections!

Given that notifications are sent out when you are added to an Ask to Buy, are there no notifications sent when it is turned off? I’m concerned that something like this could happen again and we would once again be none the wiser. I reported this as security issue to Apple but have had no response

except for the standard automated receipt confirmation.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Posted on Jul 8, 2022 10:44 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 9, 2022 2:35 PM in response to Chrismacalli

Hello Chrismacalli,

Thanks for posting in the Apple Support Communities.

When disabling Ask to Buy, this would be done by a parent or guardian within Family Sharing or by access with the passcode set up to control this setting. If you haven't set up parental controls with Family Sharing to restrict access to functions, check out the following resource for help with that: Set up parental controls with Family Sharing on iPhone - Apple Support

In addition, you can review more information on using Ask to Buy with the following resource; however, keep in mind this is typically disabled by someone that manages the feature so you may not receive a notification: Set up parental controls with Family Sharing on iPhone - Apple Support

If you'd like to leave feedback for this, use this link: Product Feedback - Apple

Have a great day!

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Answer 2

Chrismacalli Author

Level 1

6 points

Jul 10, 2022 1:46 PM in response to Brandon_J_321

Thanks Brandon,

My question is more about whether I should be notified we it disable. There are only 2 people in our group who could this and neither of us did. Having never disabled it I don’t know how easy it would be to do accidentally. But since I never received an alert that this had been done, how would I know if this were to happen again?

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Answer 3

bruno75

Community Specialist

Jul 10, 2022 1:51 PM in response to Chrismacalli

Hey there Chrismacalli,

We highly recommend reviewing the links that were provided earlier as they have more details about the Ask to Buy feature, along with how to set up parental controls with Family Sharing.

There's not a way to answer your new question as you're asking how 'easy' it is to 'accidentally' disable the Ask to Buy feature. You'd either disable it, or not, but rest assured that you'd know if you have disabled it. This is another reason we strongly recommend reviewing the resources already shared.

Cheers!

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Answer 4

Chrismacalli Author

Level 1

6 points

Jul 16, 2022 12:09 AM in response to bruno75

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for your help on this. Maybe I’m not being clear enough in what I’m asking.

I’m good with setting up Ask to buy and family sharing. We have done this and I’ve had the confirmation email through confirming that it was all set up. There are 3 people in our family sharing group. Me, my wife and my 7 year old daughter.

What I don’t understand is how my daughter was able to make in app purchases, despite this system having been turned on and neither my wife or I knowingly disabling it. All we know is that somehow the protection was turned off, along with the removal of all parental controls from her profile. Again, neither my wife or I actioned this.

Why is it that I get a confirmation email when I am added to an Ask to buy system but not when it is disabled?

Given that you have confirmed that you would definitely know if you had disabled it, then this makes the whole matter even more confusing, because we definitely did not.

Is there a way of viewing a history of our account settings so we could look at precisely what happened on this account?

Kind regards

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Answer 5

nick_h2

Community Specialist

Jul 16, 2022 8:47 AM in response to Chrismacalli

Hello Chrismacalli,

We appreciate the update, and would like to clarify a few details.

Is it possible you shared a previous purchase using another family member?

How to share purchases with your family goes over this feature, and may be how they downloaded an app without permission.

Contact Apple Support if you need to explore this further.

We hope this helps.

Cheers.

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Does ask to buy notify when switched off?

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