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In the Amazon Appstore settings, there is a preference to enable Parental Controls. When set, this causes all apps (that are installed via amazon appstore) to require the amazon password before being able to make an in-app purchase. You can also specify an optional PIN to use in lieu of the full amazon password. According to the details, this only affects in-app purchases, and it does not hide 'mature' apps or enable any filtering.

Another setting is In-App Purchasing. This preference is active by default, but it can be disabled to completely remove the possibility of in-app purchases.

By default, no password is needed for in-app purchases, and the in-app purchasing ability is active. For both of these permissions, you are required to enter your amazon password to change the permission.

My question is this: If I disable in-app purchasing completely, is there a need to also enable parental controls?

Since the preference itself cannot be altered without typing in the password, I feel like the Parental Control preference is redundant for my purposes.

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    "In-App Purchasing" is an on/off toggle for disabling the functionality altogether, whereas "Parental Controls" allows you the option of having in-app purchasing under a password/pin. If you disable it completely, putting the password on is indeed redundant. I don't see why Amazon couldn't combine these two setting into one, with 3 options: Disable, Allow, Allow with a Password.
    – Chahk
    Mar 19 '14 at 17:42
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In short, you are correct. Disabling in-app purchasing completely via In App Purchasing option makes password-protecting under the Parental Controls settings redundant.

It's definitely confusing, and could have been better accomplished by having just one setting with 3 options: Disable, Allow, Allow with a Password. It's possible that these two settings used to work differently on older versions of this app, and developers decided that keeping the settings separate would be less confusing to existing users than combining them.

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  • Almost the same question: Do parental controls do anything besides require a pin/password for in-app purchasing? Do they also limit anything else (such as hide mature apps)? If parental controls only control in-app purchasing, then this answer is perfect.
    – Stephen Schrauger
    Mar 24 '14 at 20:10
  • I have not seen any evidence that parental controls filter out apps by rating or any other criteria. To test this out, I enabled the parental controls and was still able to find and download "3D Kamasutra - Sex Positions from KamaSutra" app, with rating of "Adult Content".
    – Chahk
    Mar 24 '14 at 20:15
  • Now I need to find a way to remove this app from the list of my purchased ones :)
    – Chahk
    Mar 24 '14 at 20:16
  • You can do that on the desktop site. Go to "Your Apps and Devices" when on the app section. You have to manually page through all your apps 10 at a time, but the app in question will likely be at the top (numerics before alphabetics, or just sort by purchase date).
    – Stephen Schrauger
    Mar 24 '14 at 20:18
  • And I applaud your devotion to the scientific method. Testing a hypothesis, even when the test is undesirable, is important in finding the right solution. I, however, will trust your result instead of independently verifying it. :-)
    – Stephen Schrauger
    Mar 24 '14 at 20:23

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