My niece has just started to speak and whenever she sees someone’s mobile phone, she picks it up, puts it her ear and starts rambling words at random as if she is attending to a phone call. Last time I let her play with my Android phone, she accidentally dialed some phone number in Germany. It resulted in some costly experience, but I learned fast that you should password protect some of the features in Android in order to prevent kids from making accidental long distance calls or online purchases. In fact, Android has a setting that can be used to prevent anyone from making a purchase on the Google Play Store.
If you want to password protect Google Play Store purchases of books, movies, apps, games etc., in your Android device, then you can follow these simple steps.
- Open Google Play Store in your Android device by tapping on its icon on the home screen or in the Apps gallery.
- In the Google Play Store app, swipe from the left edge to the right to open the app menu and then tap on Settings in the menu that appears.
- On the settings page, scroll down to find a setting named Require password for purchases. You have to tap on this setting to change its value.
- In the options that appear, you can choose to enable password requirement for each and every individual purchase; or ask for the password every 30 minutes (you can make as many purchases as you want during this 30 minutes time by supplying the password only once); or choose Never to make purchases without being asked for the password.
- If you change this setting, you may be asked for the password of your Google account that you are using for your Android device.
That’s it. After configuring your Android phone to ask for password (your Google account password) every time someone tries to purchase an item from the Google Play Store, you can prevent accidental purchases made by clumsy fingers or by kids when they start playing with your Android phone behind your back.