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I got my wife and kids a Xoom tablet for christmas. I set it up with my wife's google account, downloaded a few games, a couple of apps and some fun, active wall papers and let them loose on it.
A couple of days later my wife receives an email .... "Thank you for your purchase of 'A barrel of Smurfberries' - £16" !! WTF !!
Where did they get my credit card details from ?
I particularly like the 3rd sentence in the email ... "This in-app purchase cannot be refunded." - We'll see !
It turns out that 3 months ago my wife put her card details into google "checkout" (ironically, to give money to a charity !). This is part of/linked to her google account.
It also turns out that the latest Xoom, with Android 3.2 ships with v1.0.x of Android market. This version is so old it not only does not provide ANY password or PIN protection, it also CANNOT upgrade to the latest version which can !
So one of my click happy 5 year old daughters has managed to use my credit card just by touching a button !
Here's the interesting bit ....
1) The tablet is made by Motorola, now owned by google,
2) The OS is written by google,
3) The market app - google,
4) The app that was free and easy with my card details - google.
The mental image that now have of google and beeline interactive (the company who sold the smurfberries to my 5 year old daughter) is that of a dirty old man selling sweets to kids at a play ground.
Sorry for the rant, but it helps to get things off my chest
I'll post how I resolved everything in the Android forum shortly.
