Apple has posted tonight on its Inside iTunes blog to inform parents about the Parents’ Guide to iTunes, which details how to secure iOS devices and iTunes Accounts so families can enjoy iTunes content safely.
Exercising parental control over your family’s use of iTunes.
iTunes provides powerful access to a very large and diverse world of books, music, movies, TV shows, mobile apps, podcasts, and iTunes U courses. As a parent you can set access for individual family members based on ratings, their ages, and your judgement. Parents’ Guide to iTunes provides an overview of what you can manage (age restrictions for movies, blocks against explicit content, and more) and includes links to greater detail about how to do those things. In addition, you can learn how to manage access to mobile devices and app purchases.
Specifically, the guide details how parents should not share their Apple ID passwords with their children, but rather create separate iTunes accounts funded by Apple gift cards to limit and prevent excess charges and purchases. Parents can also create an iTunes Allowance for their kids to setup a reoccurring monthly credit to accounts.
Apple goes on to detail parental controls and restrictions, to limit content their children can access in the App Store and iTunes, with instructions on how to set controls in iTunes and on iOS devices. Lastly, device passcodes are stressed to protect access to iOS devices by children.
With extreme cases in the media of children spending upwards of $5,600 due to unfettered App Store access, this guide is a must-read for parents new to iTunes and iOS devices.
