Apple sued over alleged lack of age checks for casino games in Brazil

Apple is facing a civil lawsuit in Brazil seeking R$300 million (roughly $59 million) in damages over allegations that children can download and access casino-style games on the App Store without any meaningful age verification. Here are the details.

Apple’s Brazilian App Store has a gambling problem

Last month, Brazilian officials gave Apple five business days to provide additional details about how it verifies gambling apps, monitors the App Store, and prevents minors from accessing age-restricted content.

The request came three months after the country’s National Secretariat for Digital Rights and National Consumer Secretariat first questioned Apple and Google over betting apps allegedly accessible to children.

Just days later, a 9to5Mac investigation identified roughly 100 apps that disguised gambling platforms as innocuous games and utilities to evade the App Store’s review process, many of them available to children.

Now, as reported by Tilt (via MacMagazine), Apple is facing fresh scrutiny in Brazil over the availability of gambling apps to minors in the App Store.

According to the report, the Anced (National Association of Centers for the Defense of Children and Adolescents), Educafro Brasil, and the Santo Dias Center for Human Rights filed a civil lawsuit on July 30 asking Apple to implement an effective age-verification system for all casino games distributed through the App Store.

According to Estadão, the plaintiffs are also seeking R$300 million in moral damages.

The lawsuit cites “Casino Roulette: Roulettist,” an app listed as available only to users aged 18 or older, but notes that “at no point was proof of age, document verification, or facial recognition required to access the content.”

Tilt notes that the app offers several casino games, including poker, baccarat, roulette, and slots, with in-app purchases costing up to R$599.90, or roughly $118.

Despite this being the only app directly named in the lawsuit, Anced’s lawyer claims “there are at least six other apps that simulate casinos and are available for minors to download, despite carrying an 18+ age rating.”

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs also ask Apple to prevent new casino games from being made available without age verification, maintain continuous oversight of existing titles, and submit reports on its enforcement efforts every six months.

Should Apple fail to comply with the requested measures within 10 days, the groups are asking the court to impose a daily fine of R$500,000, or roughly $98,000.

When reached for comment, Apple pointed Tilt to the parental controls available through Family Sharing and said it is testing an age-verification system in Brazil, with plans to make it “available to all users through a software update in the coming months.”