How to set up parental controls for Android

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It's highly likely you've heard the horror stories of how some parents have gotten hit with a massive credit card bill due to their kids making in-app purchases while playing with their smartphones. It's a scary situation to be caught in.

So if you want to make sure your kid doesn't accidentally hit your credit card with a US$10,000 bill for in-app purchases, you'll need to disable in-app purchases. There also other things you may want to block, such as access to your email, in case your child sends off an email full of gibberish to your entire email list. Here's how.

Disabling in-app purchases

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To disable in-app purchases, you need to head to the Play Store, go to settings and check the password box under User Controls. This will require to key in your password every time you want to buy something. You should make sure the password is something that isn't shared with your kid. Tapping on Content Filtering will also let you select the type of apps you can download based on the maturity level. This works on both smartphones and tablets.

Using the Kid's Place app

(Credit: Kid's Place)

Another option you can consider is an app called Kid's Place. It restricts the apps that your children can have access to. This free app lets you configure a screen with a grid of allowable apps and also prevents your kid from buying and downloading apps. A timer lock further limits the amount play time. To prevent them from exiting the app prematurely and bypassing the restrictions, hitting the back or home buttons will bring up a box where a password has to be entered before they can quit the app.

Android 4.3 in tablets

In Android 4.2, you can set up multiple profiles for different users, but 4.3 takes things one step further by letting you set restrictions. These restrictions include the ability to block apps from being accessed, blocking mature content as well as disabling in-app purchases.

It's actually quite easy to do this. All you need to do is head to the Settings > Users, and then add a restricted profile. It should prompt you to set up a passcode if you haven't already. You can then set a user name and select the apps that you want to allow, including browsers. You should also disable access to the Google Play Store (as well as other third party app stores) if you want to block app downloads.

Some apps will also have extra settings that can be disabled, but this is up to the developer to add in to their program. Otherwise, it will just be a standard enable/disable for the app.