Father discovers 11-year-old spent $170K on app purchases

The young girl shopped for gifts for streaming stars on the app on her mother's phone. Photo / 123rf

A horrified father discovered his 11-year-old daughter spent a whopping $170,000 on in-app purchases after realising money was missing from his account.

The man and his wife, who both live in South Korea's capital Seoul, had been saving for a house when they discovered the missing money.

He saw that 130 million South Korean won (around $NZ171928) had vanished from their account. After scratching their heads to find out where the money had gone, the couple realised it had been spent by their 11-year-old daughter on a live-streaming app called Hakuna Live.

She shopped for gifts for streaming stars on the app on her mother's phone.

The girl sent $170,000 worth of in-app credits called "diamonds" for 35 streamers between August 3 and August 12.

Unfortunately, the phone was left unlocked for the daughter to use.

"My wife always leaves her phone unlocked since she is visually impaired and suffers from brain damage," Kim told local radio station CBS on Wednesday.

The father reached out to all of the 35 streamers to plead with them for reimbursement.

He managed to get some of them to agree to reimburse him the money, but more than $55,000 will not be refunded.

Because his wife had kept her phone unlocked, there is small chance of enforcing legal refunds, according to the Korea Communications Commission.

The number of cases of parents who have found unexpected and unauthorised online payments has doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data from the Korea Content Dispute Resolution Committee shows that there were 1587 reports of unauthorised online purchases made by minors from January to September this year, compared with 813 reports made in the whole of 2019.