In the wake of that 8-year-old who racked up $1,400 in Smurfs Village purchases on her parents’ iPad, Apple recently instituted a policy that requires a user’s App Store password for making in-app purchases. But we’ve gotten some e-mails from parents who want to be able to share that password with their kids — for the purposes of downloading free content — while still preventing their children from amassing millions of useless Smurf berries.

There is a way to set your device to forbid in-app purchases, but it’s obviously not the default setting, so here’s how you do it:

1) Tap Settings on your device’s home screen.

2) Tap General.

3) Tap Restrictions.

4) If necessary, tap Enable Restrictions and enter a passcode. This passcode will prevent restrictions from being disabled without your permission.

5) Scroll down to the Allowed Content section. Switch the In-App Purchases option to OFF. Enter your Restrictions passcode if prompted.

If you later decide that you have a need for purchasing virtual Smurf crud, then just flip that setting back to ON and Smurf away.

Thanks to Julie for the tip!

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