On Wednesday, Apple confirmed that it has agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission regarding an ongoing in-app purchases lawsuit.
The suit stems from an old loophole that used to allow children to make in-app purchases without the assistance or permission of parents.
As a result of the settlement, the FTC is dropping its lawsuit against Apple, which will pay a $32.5 million penalty in the form of refunds to consumers who were subjected to these erroneous in-app purchases.
“It doesn’t feel right for the FTC to sue over a case that had already been settled,” Apple CEO Tim Cook explained to Apple employees in a communication shared Wednesday. “To us, it smacked of double jeopardy. However, the consent decree the FTC proposed does not require us to do anything we weren’t already going to do, so we decided to accept it rather than take on a long and distracting legal fight.”
Cook said that Apple received 37,000 claims and reimbursements are now being processed.
