I saw two stories over the weekend about the dangers of giving unfettered access to your Amazon account to your children. The good thing about Amazon is how easy they make it to order things but the downside is that they now have so many entry points to purchasing in the average home that just about any visitor to your house can place an order on your behalf.
Amazon have the obvious app on your mobile or tablet which you might be able to retain control over but with Amazon Alexa, the Amazon Fire Stick, Amazon Video on your set top box and Amazon Dash buttons are all gateways to your Amazon account and all capable of placing orders.
The first story I saw was a Tamebay reader who suddenly discovered that they’d signed up to a trial of Amazon Prime. It would appear that her young son was playing with her Fire TV and agreed to Prime in order to access some paid for content. This appears to be no isolated case – someone else replied to the same thread saying that their son had made a purchase for 500 coins for a game and an episode of Dora the Explorer before they found out he knew the PIN number for the Amazon fire stick.
The second story is more notable because it is none other than Doug Gurr the head of Amazon UK who has fallen foul of his children placing Amazon orders.
“Toilet roll turns up in my house every day, I have to hide the [Amazon Dash] buttons from my kids”
– Doug Gurr, Amazon UK Country Manager
Apparently there is nothing more amusing for a child than pressing an Amazon Dash button when sitting on the toilet and in case you’re wondering, no Doug doesn’t get a discount but pays the same prices for good purchased on Amazon that you and I do.
Of course if you do place an order accidentally (or if someone in your household does) you should get an instant notification that the order has been placed and it’s easy enough to cancel it. The other alternative is to turn off one click ordering on your Amazon account which pretty much disables everything including Alexa, but unless you keep the PIN for your Amazon Fire TV a secret then your kids can still sign you up for Amazon Prime.
