The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Amazon today

According to foreign media reports, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today sued Amazon alleging that the Internet company failed to try its best to prevent children from buying paid mobile applications without their parents' knowledge project.

This incident was revealed last week. Amazon said at the time that it would not settle the allegations with the government's consumer protection agency. In a letter to the FTC last week, Amazon said the company has given the money back to parents who want to sue the matter to court.

Amazon said on Thursday the previous statement is still valid, and did not comment on the matter more.

The dispute is related to in-app purchases in children's games on Amazon Kindle products. It's sometimes hard to tell if users spent virtual tokens or real money when buying virtual items on these devices.

When Amazon rolled out an in-app billing item in 2011, buying content that priced from 99 cents to 99 cents did not require a passcode. This policy changed in 2012, Amazon requires a password to buy content of more than 20 dollars. In 2013, the company escalated its password protection policy again, but according to the FTC's complaint, the new program left a gap and children can still make purchases during this time.

The complaint states that a mother's daughter spends $ 358.42 while playing a game.

Jessica RIch, director of Consumer Protection at FTC, said in a media interview that the matter affected thousands of consumers and that unauthorized purchases totaled millions of dollars.

"The core of consumer protection is that consumer consent must be sought before fees are paid, and both the physical store and the app store should adhere to this," the FTC executive said.

The FTC hopes the court will order Amazon to refund unauthorized charges and also seek to ban Amazon from charging users through in-app purchases without permission.

A similar lawsuit was announced by the FTC last week when the defendant was operator T-Mobile. FTC accused T-Mobile of the United States of charging the user through constellation such as short message of constellation, ringing of mobile phone, etc. At the time, but the user never approves this kind of purchase. After the case was announced, FTC urged consumers to carefully check their bill bills.

In January of this year, FTC and Apple reached a settlement on a similar issue with a settlement amount of 32.5 million U.S. dollars.

Apple complained quite then. In a memo, company chief executive Tim Cook explained to employees that the settlement does not require the company to take any measures. However, he went on to point out that the matter was a bit "double indictment" because the company had previously settled a similar class action lawsuit and refunded the amount charged.

Amazon said last week that the company's parental controls are more stringent than those imposed by the FTC to Apple. (Pooh)