Tiktok

[Zombiemum1946]

We've discovered our daughter has been gifting money on tiktok. £2300 has left her dad's account. Has anyone had any success in getting the money back ?

DD did similar with Robux, money was gone.

It's very difficult to monitor everything sometimes

Don't be ridiculous. The kid is 9. It's really EASY to monitor their social media use at that age. It comes under 'don't fucking give them it'

I don't agree.

I don't agree

You don't agree with what?

Good Lord!😳 Put her up for adoption immediately!! (I'm joking!) I doubt you'll get that money back from the TikTok ppl. Do what pp suggested about contacting the influencers. Hopefully, they'll be understanding and will return it. Gosh...good luck OP.

But they badger away until you download them.
They probably badger away because they know you'll give in. If you say no and mean it they'll probably stop.

Get in touch with the App Store or whatever the android version of support is and explain the situation. My DS managed to spend £640 on in app purchases when he was younger through a couple of games. Thankfully  support were really good and refunded the lot. My bank we're going to refund the money if the other routes failed.

'We monitored content and it all seemed legit.'

How?

Also every time anything like game coins are purchased through apple or amazon ours is set up as I have to put in password and then get an email to say it's purchased. That's on all our devices. Surely no one gives a kid open access to purchase anything

I would remove the app and the bloody phone as punishment ..I doubt you will get the money back...some dim behaviour here !

How was she contacting influencers without you noticing? Can you see what else she was doing?

Why is everyone attacking the parents?! I bet there's been some parenting decisions that you've made that others won't have agreed with!
Judging isn't helping.
I'm with you OP I didn't realise you could send money on the app and therefore it wouldn't have occurred to me to look for it.
All you can do is contact the bank/ the influences, maybe tweet them so it's public and ask them in good faith to refund the money as she's nine.
Good Luck!

The easiest way to stop this is to never put card details on anything, then nothing can be charged accidentally. I know this doesn't help you now but please do this in future.

If it were me there would be no tech for quite a long time - no phone, ipad etc and it would be paid back over time.

Why is everyone attacking the parents?!

Not so much attacking as a bit stunned that anyone could think signing a 9 year old up to TikTok is a good idea. I mean, seriously

I bet there's been some parenting decisions that you've made that others won't have agreed with

I don't doubt that, we all see things differently; this is pretty basic though.

Judging isn't helping.

I think it sometimes it does. Maybe someone will be reading this and take the comments onboard, this being able to protect their child. The issue here for me isn't the money so much as what the 9 year old has been exposed to.

I'm with you OP I didn't realise you could send money on the app and therefore it wouldn't have occurred to me to look for it.

Would it occur to you not to sign your 9 year old up to TikTok in the first place? Because most parents should know that.

All you can do is contact the bank/ the influences, maybe tweet them so it's public and ask them in good faith to refund the money asshe's nine.

I do agree OP should at least try to get money back. I don't know how successful she will be.

That is dreadful.

However, even though the card was linked didn’t she need to put in the cvc code?

All the judgy posters here clearly have no clue how Tiktok works! The coin & gifting function is hidden and only activates during live streams. You cannot monitor this even if you tried unless you were looking over her shoulder every second she's on the app. She could be watching normal Tiktoks one second (free) and then joining a livestream the next second (gift option open). Once the live stream is over, the app only displays the usual free clips and you can't see or activate the shop.

I work with influencers and contacting them by email is probably best with an eye catching subject line. (Eg URGENT! Daughter's Tiktok Livestream Problem). Most will check emails in case they receive sponsorship offers, however less interesting subject lines tend to get overlooked. If this influencer is very big and has some integrity then they should be happy returning the money. 2.3K is not a huge amount for large influencers. Alternatively, you can explain the situation and ask them to return however much they see fit. The transfer will have to be done off Tiktok since it's not possible to send coins back to users. Including a Paypal or bank account details upfront will help. Most influencers don't have time to write lots of emails back and forth so one email with all the info is ideal. If the influencer is huge, then you may be able to get the situation sorted through their management.

BBC report last February re online sexual predators using Tiktok

*Video-sharing app TikTok is failing to suspend the accounts of people sending sexual messages to teenagers and children, a BBC investigation has found.

Hundreds of sexually explicit comments have been found on videos posted by children as young as nine.

While the company deleted the majority of these comments when they were reported, most users who posted them were able to remain on the platform, despite TikTok's rules against sexual messages directed at children.*

All the judgy posters here clearly have no clue how Tiktok works!

The coin & gifting function is hidden and only activates during live streams. You cannot monitor this even if you tried unless you were looking over her shoulder every second she's on the app.

Indeed I didn't know that re gifting. What I do know is that you don't give TikTok to a 9 year old. I'm quite happy to judge on that point.

We checked the videos she was watching and making, we checked she knew everyone that had access to her videos ( all were classmates and her older brother). We checked her messages. There was a problem with privacy settings but that was a problem for thousands of users. As for letting her go on tiktok with her friends making us bad parents, then that applies to hundreds of parents in my daughters school alone. Online safety chats are had regularly at home and at school. She's fully aware of what inappropriate behaviour and language is. Her having a phone means that wherever she is she can get hold of us and vice versa. At her age (and younger) I was fired out of the house to play and only went back for meals or before it got dark, my mother could only take an educated guess at where we were and send one of us to look for the other. She goes to the park up the road with her friends or their house. As a much older mum I remember the days of being sent to the shop at a younger age, no pedestrian crossings, not much in the way of traffic police, no-one else with me and definitely no traffic cameras, and horrifying child safety films that i still remember all to vividly forty years later (the seventies were hard-core,kiddies squashed by road rollers on building sites and electrocuted at substations and that was just the safety films). Kids today are far more restricted, monitored,everything is on a schedule, out of school clubs with little to no free play. She has far less freedom than her dad or I had and I worry about the lack of confidence she may have because of that. I'm not a bad parent for being unaware of a hidden app. A bad parent is what I've had to report in the past for suspected cruelty, abuse and neglect.

Would it not come under ‘in app purchases’ which can easily be turned off in restrictions?

I’ve never given my card details for anything on App Store etc because of hearing about things like this happening

My dd is 9 and has tiktok. I downloaded the app on my phone and signed her in and she is signed in on her tablet. I can monitor what shes doing on my phone. Tbh shes not a tech minded child and rarely goes on it and when she does it's annoying as hell listening to 30 secs of god knows how many songs. Every child I know, DDs friends, my friends kids all between 8 and 12 have tiktok. So all those judging are judging a very large population of parents! As for the amount of money op call the app store or play store whichever one it is they may refund you if you explain. Then take the card off because she could buy all sorts with that. Never register cards on kids devices

We've shut everything down. The bank have put a total bar on Apple and Apple are going to see how much they can get back for us. A previous poster suggested contacting the influencers and that's our next step. We're also going to inform the school parents committee of the hidden app so it can go out on, message, email, Facebook and news letter. The school will most likely do a talk on it as well. My husband never usually attaches his card to anything, this is the first time and most likely the last.

Tiktok is banned in this house, along with all other paedo-magnets. A 9yo has absolutely no need to be using it. It sounds like she'd have spent less if you'd let her play on eBay.

I do hope you get your money back, I think my DH would have exploded.

My 8 year olds are badgering me for TikTok. NOT A CHANCE.

OP I don't have children so I'm not going to say I know much about this

what I will say is that a savings account card should never be linked to anything if you can avoid it. But generally I would say never link a card to an app that anyone is using except you.

Whenever my DCs school do a talk on things like internet safety, it’s never the sort of parents who give their DCs their debit cards to play with who go.