Facebook Allowed Kids To Spend Millions In Parents' Money: Report

MENLO PARK, CA — Facebook is being accused of allowing minors to spend millions of dollars on in-game purchases using their parents' credit cards. According to reports, a 2012 lawsuit says Facebook was aware of the large amount of money kids were spending and made it difficult for parents to get their money back.

CBS reported court documents as saying a Facebook analysis found that between 2008 and 2014, minors made over $34 million in purchases. "[I]n nearly all cases, the parent... didn't think the child would be allowed to buy anything without their password or authorization first," the report said.

One mother, Glynnis Bohannan, let her 12-year-old son use a credit card to purchase the game Ninja Saga. When she got her credit card bill, she was shocked, according to the CBS report. Her son had been tapping a stack of coins in the game to replenish them, each time charging the credit card.

After difficulty reaching Facebook for a refund, Bohannan filed a lawsuit which snowballed into a class action suit, CBS reports.

A 2011 internal Facebook study found that "the children didn’t even realize they were spending real money within the game," according to Erik Kain, a senior contributor at Forbes. The pay-to-play prompts, like the stack of coins, don't "necessarily look like ‘real’ money to a minor," according to Tara Stewart, who was a part of the study.

The practice has been named "friendly fraud," CBS reports. In 2012, Facebook analyzed refund requests for the game Angry Birds and found that over 90 percent of them were due to friendly fraud.

According to the Forbes report, Facebook said "we routinely examine our own practices, and in 2016 agreed to update our terms and provide dedicated resources for refund requests related to purchased made by minors on Facebook."

Photo credit: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the F8 Facebook Developers conference on May 1, 2018 in San Jose, California. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered the opening keynote to the FB Developer conference that runs through May 2. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)